34 Lieut. Col. Miller’s description of a percussion shell, 
cone foremost, and another that passed through the target, 
left a hole perfectly circular, evidently showing that it had 
passed through horizontally. Four of the shorter shells 
were fired at 600 yards, but were found very inferior to the 
longer ones, both in range and accuracy of fire. 
Having detailed the experiments that have been made with 
percussion shells, as accurately as I can, and as fully as seems 
to be necessary, I shall now conclude with some observations 
connected with the subject. 
So far as range and efficiency are concerned, the experi- 
ments have perhaps been as successful as could have been 
expected, in so novel an invention. With respect to accuracy 
of fire, I am fully sensible that much still remains to be done ; 
and to those who ask why this most important object was 
not more completely attained before the discovery was sub- 
mitted to the public, I beg leave to answer, that no invention 
in gunnery, so far as I am aware, either in former or more 
recent times, has ever been brought to perfection without the 
help of long continued and laborious experiments, which from 
their nature are so expensive, that they cannot be expected 
to be prosecuted at the cost of any individual. In the present 
instance, only one hundred and four shells have been fired 
altogether, eighty-five of which were filled with powder, and 
out of these, thirty-nine exploded upon striking the objects 
fired at. In the experiments made at Woolwich, on the 
Pheasant sloop of war, in the river, which are certainly the 
most important that have yet been made, only eleven suc- 
ceeded out of thirty-one ; no great number certainly, but at 
the same time enough to have destroyed the vessel, had they 
been heavy metal. The fire at present is sufficiently accurate 
