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MACHINE-GUNS, OE MITBAILLEUSES. 
By S. J. MACKIE, C.E. 
F OE some time past the public have heard of experiments 
with machine-guns at the famous government shooting- 
grounds at Shoeburyness, and the reports of these trials, and 
the notoriety weapons of this nature have attained in the 
fearful battles which have recently been waged on the Conti- 
nent, have combined to give the keenest interest to this sub- 
ject. The French went into war with much boasting over 
these terrible mitrailleuses, and these new arms, it is clear, must 
have made their mark, or we should not now hear of their con- 
templated introduction into the Prussian armies. The Prus- 
sians, like ourselves, have preferred artillery ; and, without 
doubt, if the sole option of one or the other were a necessity, 
and judgment lay between rifled field-guns and mitrailleuses, 
the choice of the former for general service would be right and 
proper. The field-gun can fire buildings, destroy material, 
and make a breach ; whilst the mitraille contained in its shells 
is carried to long distances with the force of a large charge of 
gunpowder. Nevertheless, the machine-guns throwing com- 
pact clouds of bullets, or streaking with thin horizontal lines 
the front of the enemy, have special deadly uses, and are, 
indeed, for certain purposes, most terribly destructive weapons. 
The war has already done this good — that it has, at least par- 
tially, awakened this country to a sense of its military, if not 
national, insecurity ; and the popularisation of some of the 
prominent items of military mechanical and physical science 
will serve a very useful purpose at this time, in respect to the 
discussions which have so freely been awakened. 
Of the French mitrailleuses no specimen has yet been 
brought to trial in this country ; but two weapons of the class 
of machine-guns have undergone an extensive, though not as 
yet by any means an exhaustive, test. These two are the 
Montigny-Christophe mitrailleuse and the Gatling machine- 
gun. The former (fig. 1, Plate 66) is a composite weapon, 
