28 6 Count Rumforp’s Experiments to determine 
cases, almost incredible ; and it is by no means difficult to 
contrive matters so as to render it very apparent, and also to 
prevent it. 
If a common horse pistol be fired with a loose ball, and so 
small a charge of powder that the ball shall not be able to 
penetrate a deal board so deep as to stick in it when fired 
against it from the distance of six feet; the same ball, dis- 
charged from the same pistol, with the same charge of powder, 
may be made to pass quite through one deal board, and bury 
itself in a second placed behind it, merely by preventing the 
loss of force which arises from what is called windage; as I have 
found more than once by actual experiment. 
I have in my possession a musket, from which, with a com- 
mon musket charge of powder, I fire two bullets at once with 
the same velocity that a single bullet is discharged from a 
musket on the common construction, with the same quantity 
of powder. And, what renders the experiment still more strik- 
ing, the diameter of the bore of my musket is exactly the same 
as that of a common musket, except only in that part of it 
where it joins the chamber, in which part it is just so much 
contracted that the bullet which is next to the powder may 
stick fast in it. I ought to add, that though the bullets are of 
the common size, and are consequently considerably less in 
diameter than the bore, means are used which effectually pre- 
vent the loss of force by windage; and to this last circumstance 
it is doubtless owing, in a great measure, that the charge ap- 
pears to exert so great a force in propelling the bullets. 
That the conical form of the lower part of the bore, where 
it unites with the chamber, has a considerable share in pro- 
ducing this extraordinary effect, is however very certain, as I 
