THE 110YAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
495 
The adoption of this carriage for India, relieves ns from a very great 
difficulty. We have magnificent wood in that country, but it is getting 
scarce, the scarcity being due to the introduction of railways, and to 
the forests having been neglected. The timber for the manufacture of 
the carriages had to be stacked in covered sheds for several years 
before use. Of the timber thus stored, a great deal split in drying to 
such an extent as to be useless for the larger portions of the carriage, 
viz. the trail-beam and naves. Thus, when -a stress came, as in and 
after the mutiny, the main difficulty in equipping the batteries with 
their carriages was the want of seasoned wood. 
With the new carriage, the largest piece of wood required is for the 
axle-bed, which acts as a mere cushion: its soundness is not vital to 
the efficiency of the carriage. The spokes, felloes, and the slight wood¬ 
work of the limber will not be, under almost any circumstances, difficult 
to supply in India; for it is easy to get a small piece of sound wood, 
when it might be impossible to find a large piece of the same quality. 
Again, the open trail of the iron carriage permits of the passage of 
Sir Joseph Whitworth's* admirable elevating-screw. With the wooden 
carriage, you were compelled to bore an oval hole of very considerable 
size through your beam, at the very point where it was weakest. 
Around this lamentable hole, you bored four smaller holes for the 
holding-down-bolts of the socket of the ball-nut of the elevating-screw. 
This defect of construction is avoided in the bracket-trail. 
Once more, we are subject to the most dreadful pest of white ants i$ 
India, against which there is only one effective precaution: it is to 
move all articles made of wood every day. With an equipped battery 
this amounts to mere inconvenience—you have to look after your 
wagons in your sheds; but in arsenals and manufactories, the difficulty 
is a very serious one. In our new carriages, iron being largely used, 
those who have charge of stores will have all the less to fear. 
20. Let me now succinctly compare this muzzle-loading 9-pr. with 
the breech-loaders of the service. 
I have no doubt in the world, that a gun on the Armstrong breech¬ 
loading system, firing 9-pr. shells with a charge of If lb., and weighing 
8 cwt., could be made, which would equal the 9-pr. muzzle-loader 
bronze gun in accuracy, and in flatness of trajectory; but there can be 
no manner of doubt that the breech-loaders of the service are on both 
points inferior to it. 
The adoption of the latter system entails the following heavy list of 
complications :—- 
(1) Detonators to the fuzes, which are liable to injury by climate or 
jolting, despite elaborate packing arrangements. 
(2) Breech-screw, with tappet lever and keep pins with reserve. 
(3) Vent-pieces with reserve. 
(4) Facing implements. 
* Vide Eig. 7. 
