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employed for these experimental purposes. It must also be 
borne in mind that Mr. Hughes’ design was far in advance of 
any other, and that his shield was made and delivered to the 
Grovernment over two years before it was shot at, and twelve 
months before the designs of the Gribraltar and Malta shields — 
the first made for actual service in this country, although 
Kussia, Belgium, and Peru had for some years employed iron 
in their land defences — were issued by the Eoyal Engineer 
Department to contractors. In consequence of the advance 
made in the power of artillery in this interval, Mr. Hughes was 
allowed to strengthen his target, before it was brought up to 
the competition, by the addition of girders of the same depth 
of metal as had been employed in the strengthening girders of 
the Gribraltar shield. This addition is necessarily a patch, as it 
had to be fitted on through the bolt-holes, and in connection 
with other parts already existing, and planned without any 
conception of future modification. In designs upon this prin- 
ciple hereafter, a thinner, more homogeneous, and far more 
elegant structure could be produced at a less cost, and with 
greater strength of endurance and resistance. The competition 
with the Gribraltar shield having now been carried out, round 
for round, the same in range, in character, weight and velocity 
of projectiles, by the same guns, and the same charges of 
powder, the comparison of the plate-upon-plate system with the 
hollow stringer compound backing system is complete. We 
have then in this frame a very simple structure — a broad sheet 
of iron, or inner skin,” supported at each side by a triangular 
strut, secured to suitable base-plates. This skin forms the 
internal wall of the defensive work, and never ought to be 
pierced; everything — shot, shell, and langridge — ought to be 
stopped outside of it, if the shield is to be really a defence. 
And either a defence, a perfect defence, it must be, or it will be 
a murderous blunder and a devilish deceit. Palliser shots 
have never yet been fired in anger, nor has a 9-inch Woolwich 
gun ever yet lodged these terrible things in fort or ship. Few 
men — very few men indeed — have seen as yet enough to know 
even the probable results, and those few must know (although 
some for selfish reasons will not admit) their deadly destruc- 
tiveness ; but the public at large must no longer rely upon 
pluck and spirit to make up for mechanical and structural 
deficiencies. Not that British pluck and spirit would not make 
men calmly walk up to certain death, or would not keep them at 
work in the midst of direst horrors, but weapons and their 
appurtenances that cost from 2,0001. to 5,000Z. apiece can be 
disabled by a splinter ; and an artilleryman, trained by years of 
practice to hit a two-foot square at a thousand yards away, may 
be put hors de combat by a bit of langridge not bigger than a 
