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MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
intended to do this, and probably there are not a dozen people in the 
service who know of it, and would think of it, even where they had it. 
The shrapnel and case differ only in size and in details from those of 
the Woolwich guns. 
Field Equipment. 
This we must look upon as in a state of transition—our breech-loading 
field equipment having had its foundations thoroughly shaken. 
The introduction of the 7-pr. mountain gun has been followed up by 
the much more important decision in favour of the muzzle-loading gun 
for India, described to us by Colonel Maxwell. 
The Dartmoor Committee declare that we have as yet failed to get any 
reliable percussion fuze; and on the production of that most desirable 
store seems to depend the efficiency of the segment shell, once the sole 
projectile of the system. 
However, let us review the equipment exactly as it stands at present— 
that is, with common shell, segment shell, solid shot still for the 20-pr., 
and case shot for breech-loading guns; common shell, shrapnel shell, 
and case shot for the 7-pr. muzzle-loading; and common and shrapnel 
for the 9-pr. muzzle-loading gun. The case I may briefly dispose of by 
saying that they are of the Eoyal Laboratory pattern, lead and antimony 
balls being grudged even to the poor little 6-pr.—it has got them at 
present, but a pattern has gone forward in which sand shot are substi¬ 
tuted. The 20-pr. contains 9 lbs. 12 ozs. of sand shot; Reeves* pattern 
—which it superseded—contained 13 lbs. 12 ozs. of the same; the total 
weight of the two projectiles being 15 lbs. and 14 lbs. 14 ozs. respec¬ 
tively. The common shell are not so powerless as they are generally 
considered. The 20-pr. contains 1 lb. 2 ozs. of bursting charge, against 
1 lb. contained by the 24-pr. howitzer, and 1 lb. 5 ozs. by the 32-pr. 
howitzer; still the regular field gun shell—the 12-pr.—only contains 
9J ozs. of powder. 
Hence the wish for a howitzer. 
In Abyssinia, with the 7-pr., a double shell was used for vertical 
firing—that is, at high angles approaching the conditions of vertical 
fire; and here I believe a great step in advance was made, if not 
unconsciously, at all events without perhaps fully realising all the 
bearings of the question. 
It may be observed that vertical fire is in a very crude condition. So 
little touched has it been by the march of rifled guns, that this is the 
only point at which a discussion of rifled projectiles even approaches 
the subject. Rifled mortars have hardly been made experimentally; 
and so little promise of decided success has appeared, that it seems 
almost necessary to attempt it, even with the hope of little beyond the 
improvements that follow the employment of wrought-iron instead of 
cast. 
It appears to me that the difficulties are greatly aggravated by the 
employment of a charge varying with the range; because this entails a 
varying velocity, and hence a varying rate of rotation, and to give a 
pitch abrupt enough to keep the projectile point-first with the smaller 
