252 
MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
THE FUTURE 
ARMAMENT OF OUR FIELD ARTILLERY. 
A PAPER READ AT THE R.A. INSTITUTION, WOOLWICH, JANUARY 16, 1871, 
BY 
LIEUTENANT C. JONES, It.A., 
CAPTAIN INSTRUCTOR, ROYAB GUN FACTORIES. 
Colonel Phillpotts, B.H.A., occupied the chair, and introduced the 
lecturer to the meeting, stating that if at the conclusion anyone 
present wished to offer any remarks, the meeting would be happy to 
hear him. t 
Lieut. Jones then read the following paper :— 
That the equipment of our field artillery is not in a satisfactory 
condition is allowed on all sides. The subject has, for some years past, 
attracted considerable attention, and we have lately been awakened to 
its importance by the total overthrow of the French artillery in the 
earlier battles of the present war, which overthrow has been very 
generally attributed to the inferiority of their artillery. The steps 
which have lately been taken by our authorities have gone far towards 
improving our position in this respect, as I hope to shew in the course 
of this paper. I do not propose to go into the whole question of 
equipment: it is not one which can be fairly dealt with in the space of 
one short lecture, even if I were in a position to do it justice. I wish 
to speak more particularly of the gun, and the question which I 
propose for discussion is this; “ What are the best guns with which we 
can arm our field artillery V 3 The subject would appear to be one 
suitable for discussion in this Institution, and I hope to be able to 
bring forward some facts which may materially assist us in fairly 
discussing the matter, and possibly in arriving at a just conclusion. 
Now the first question which suggests itself in connection with the 
armament of field artillery, is one which, though of the greatest im¬ 
portance, has long since been worn threadbare, I mean the question 
of the relative advantages of a breech-loading and a muzzle-loading gun. 
It would be waste of time to recapitulate the well known arguments 
on both sides, suffice it to say that the balance of opinions seems for 
