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On the recommendation of the Council, it was— 
. ~@ 
Resotvep,—1. That attendance at the Stated Meetings of the Com- 
mittee of Publication, as prescribed by the resolution of February 27, 
1860, shall reckon as attendance at the Meetings of the Council. 
2. That the sum of £50 be placed in the hands of the Council for 
the purchase of antiquities for the Academy’s Museum. 
Captain A. T. Braxery, R. A., read a paper— 
ON THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF A PRINCIPLE ANNOUNCED TO THE ACA- 
DEMY BY R. MALLET, ESQ.; AND SOME REMARKS ON RIFLED CANNON. 
For at Jeast two centuries the advantages of cutting spiral grooves in the 
inside of the barrels of small-arms has been known, although we possess 
no record to prove that the reason for it was understood until Mr. 
Robins investigated the subject, about 100 years ago. That gentleman 
not only explairied how the resistance of the atmosphere retarded the 
flight of projectiles, and its friction deflected them from their expected 
course, and how the latter evil was lessened by “rifling” the barrel, 
thus giving the projectile a rotation about an axis parallel to that of the 
gun; but he also distinctly pointed out the gain in range to be obtained 
by using elongated shot. He died before completing his experiments ; 
and, until about the year 1823, no progress seems to have been made in 
that direction, though I have no doubt that the subject was investigated 
during the interim, and that at this very moment many of those inves- 
tigations could be found on the shelves of a certain public office, neatly 
tied up with red tape, and most correctly labelled. 
In 1823, Captain Norton, of the 34th Regiment, began to fire elon- 
gated bullets, and he soon overcame those unexpected difficulties which 
meet the first experimenter in every branch of science. His success was 
unfortunate for himself, and useless to his country, which only acknow- 
ledged the justice of his views after Messrs. Delvigne and Minié had 
worked out the problem for the French Government. 
The advantage of an elongated projectile obviously is, that the air 
has a less surface to resist than if the same weight of bullet were in a 
spherical form, and that, consequently, less velocity is lost in passing a 
given distance through the atmosphere. The disadvantage is, that the 
long bullet leaves the barrel with a less initial velocity the longer it is 
in proportion to its diameter, because the gas of the gunpowder has a 
less surface to press against. 
It is evident that for every range there will be a particular form of 
bullet better suited than others, and that the very long bullet necessary 
to hit a target 1200 yards off may be ill suited to shoot a living object 
300 yards distant, as this would have time to move after seeing the 
flash of the rifle before the slow-moving bullet reached them. Sports- 
men have abandoned very long bullets, after a fair trial of them. Pub- 
lic opinion is now attempting to force their use on the army. 
It seems strange, at first sight, that cannon were not earlier and 
more extensively rifled than they were. The reason is not obvious, why 
