7° ITALIAN FIELD GUN. 
399 
that nearly all the dimensions of a gun-carriage are dependent upon 
the diameter of its wheels ; and that if a light gun-carriage and materiel 
generally be desiderata, the only feasible way to reduce the existing 
extravagant weights drawn by the teams of the British artillery is to 
reduce the diameter of the wheels; and it has, it is hoped, been shown 
above that theoretically this object can be attained without sacrifice to 
the shooting powers of the gun or to the strength of the material. 
On the introduction of a new piece of artillery into the service, there 
is always found some one to give an account of its merits. So it was 
with the Italian artillery. The officer who undertook the task pub¬ 
lished a pamphlet from which a good many of the details of this paper 
have been gathered. He seems to write the words of wisdom when he 
says :—“In making the project for a new system of artillery, in general 
it is impossible completely to satisfy certain conditions without par¬ 
tially sacrificing others. The criterion of artillery, therefore, consists 
in giving the preference to the conditions of great importance, without 
losing sight of those which have only a secondary value ; that is, the 
latter should not be so completely neglected as to give rise to incon¬ 
venience in service.”* 
The more this system of field artillery is examined, the more one 
becomes convinced that a fair balance of advantages has been struck. 
Every item—especially in the carriage—has been reasoned upon, 
worked out by experiment, or got at by analogy or by the adoption of 
improvements, often judiciously modified, taken from other artilleries. 
There is nothing arbitrary, or servilely imitated from old patterns, v 
home or foreign: its designers appear to be of opinion that what is 
good is good, irrespective of its source. Finally, there is a great deal 
of originality well worthy of the serious consideration of other artilleries. 
Comparing the Italian 7 C gun with the 9-pr. gun of 6 cwts. of the 
English horse artillery, the above table of comparison shows that for 
every 100 lbs. drawn by the Italian, the English team has to 
draw 138 lbs. 
POSTSCRIPT. 
Since the above was written, the following more detailed information 
as to the gun-carriage has been obtained:— 
The bracket sides of the carriage are of plate-iron (0*2 ins. thick), 
with the edges turned down inwards on a suitably shaped anvil. The 
object of this form is to give stiffness to the trail. The difficulty of 
turning down the iron occurs when two lines of an irregularly formed 
profile meet; but it is precisely about the junction of such lines where 
special fittings are required—as, for instance, at the trunnion seats, the 
end of the trail, Ac. At these points there is no turn over; the plate 
is riveted between two forgings, after the fashion of a sandwich. This 
* “ Le nuove batterie di cannoni da cent. 7 a rctroearica, 5 ’ per C. Pozzi, Cap. d’Art a * Eoma, 1874. 
