No. 144.J 573 



use. The powder and ball are covered in the same metallic case 

 or cover, so that one may swim a river with these pistols in his 

 belt, without the least damage to the powder. It is, in short, the 

 most perfect thing in the shooting line that we ever took in our 

 hands. 



President Pell remarked — Is the principle of the Minie or ex- 

 panding bullet capable of affording either greater range or greater 

 accuracy than is obtained by breech loadiog guns? Wherein 

 consists the difference in the practice of the new rifle and the old? 



It is not in the gun, but in the ball, or that part of the charge 

 which generates the projectile force. The improvement consists 

 entirely in the form of the ball, which is made conical, with a 

 hollow recess at the base, into w^hich a metallic plug is thrust by 

 the discharge. The plug is so constructed that when driven into 

 the ball it compresses its outer edges against the sides of the bar- 

 rel, and at the same time forces a portion of the lead, from its 

 ductility, to enter the groove, and to give the ball, when dis- 

 charged, that revolving motion, which carries with such unerring 

 certainty to the mark. 



By experiments tried in England at a distance of seven hun- 

 dred yards, with a Minie rifle, only one bullet missed the target 

 out of twelve 5 the eleven were scattered from six inches to four 

 feet from the bull's eye. At eight hundred yards, three shots 

 missed the target, and the remaining nine passed through boards 

 two inches thick, and lodged at a distance of twenty yards be- 

 hind. The same results were obtained at nine hundred yards; 

 and at one thousand yards there were but very few bullets that 

 did not enter the target. 



In these experiments the rifle was supported, and the sight 

 graduated to a scale, in the ratio of the distance, varying from 

 one hundred to one thousand yards, which latter may be con- 

 sidered the range of this destructive instrument. We have tele- 

 scopic rifles, loaded at the breech, that will throw shot two hun- 

 dred and twenty yards distance, into a circle of one and a half 

 inches diameter, and at four hundred and forty yards, into a circle 

 eight inches in diameter. 



