THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
253 
some time past to have been on the side of the muzzle-loader; every 
committee of artillery officers that has gone into the subject having 
reported strongly in its favour, and a gun of this description having 
been lately adopted for the armament of our batteries in India, and our 
horse artillery at home. We may therefore assume for our present 
purpose that the future field gun will be a muzzle-loader, and any who 
are inclined to dissent from this assumption will, I hope, favour us with 
their opinions during the discussion which is invited at the conclusion 
of this paper. 
It being assumed then, for the present, that our field guns should be 
muzzle-loaders, the next question which presents itself is, “ What is the 
most suitable metal of which to construct them Now until the 
present year the whole of our rifled field guns, with the exception of a 
few mountain guns required on an emergency for Bhootan, were made 
of wrought-iron or steel, or of a combination of both, but the mountain 
7-prs. for Bhootan were improvised by rifling bronze 3-prs., and, for 
obvious local reasons, the gun lately adopted for India was made of 
bronze. 
We have then four metals, or combinations of metals, to choose from, 
viz.:— 
1. Steel alone. 
2. Wrought-iron alone. 
3. Wrought-iron lined with steel. 
4. Bronze. 
A great deal may no doubt be said in favour of each of the four. 
The question is however not what will make a good gun, but what 
will give us the very best gun with which to arm our batteries for 
home service. Let us see then what are the merits and demerits 
of each. 
And 1st, as regards steel alone .—The only gun in the service 
which is made of this material alone is the 7-pr. mountain gun of 
150 lbs. weight, commonly known as the Abyssinian gun. The 
charge of this piece is so small that it can be fired with perfect 
safety, but steel has not been introduced for larger natures on 
account of the undoubted liability of guns made of that material, 
unstrengthened with iron coils, to burst explosively when firing our 
ordinary service charges. This is greatly due to the want of uniformity 
exhibited by masses of steel, a defect which has driven even the cele¬ 
brated Krupp to give up attempting to make heavy guns homogeneous 
in structure, and to adopt a system of building up, similar to that which 
has been in use in this country for years, though he still adheres to this 
treacherous metal for every portion of his guns. 
The bursting of steel guns, to which I have referred, has happened 
in a number of instances ; one of the most notable being the destruction 
of six of the Prussian 9-prs. in the campaign of 1866. 
As it is a first essential that our guns should be perfectly safe, this 
material by itself must be discarded. 
2nd. Wrought-iron .—The original Armstrong 6-pr. gun had a steel 
