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AMMUNITION OF ARTILLERY IN THE FIELD. 
1. Under all circumstances shrapnel in preference to common shell. 
2. The same. 
3. The fire of hostile artillery may be kept under by injury to men 
or materiel. Its mobility can be destroyed by injury to men, horses, 
or materiel. Every experiment and the experience of the Franco- 
G-erman war prove fully that common shell has little effect upon 
materiel; compared with shrapnel shell it is useless against men or 
horses. In a word, for this work shrapnel alone has effect. 
4. For this, again, shrapnel has shown its superiority to common 
shell. 
5. A strong belief still appears to remain in the efficiency of 
common shell for this purpose. It would, however, appear probable 
that a shell giving a heavy concentrated fire of numerous bullets must 
be superior to one which has at best only a small number of highly 
dispersed splinters. Certainly all published accounts tend to prove that 
this is the case. Shrapnel shell may, therefore, be said to be best for 
this also. 
6 and 7. The same remark holds good as in case 3. 
8. Where cover is material affording actual protection, such as 
buildings, walls, &c., common shell only can be used. 
9. Where the cover offers but small actual resistance, as in the out¬ 
skirts of woods, brushwood, &c., shrapnel shell would doubtless be 
superior. In other positions common shell, from its greater lateral 
spread and destructive effect, would be best. 
10. For shelter trenches, if the fire is direct, time shrapnel burst 
slightly high so as to obtain the full effect of the larger angle of 
descent of the lower half of the cone; or, if the fire is oblique, per¬ 
cussion shrapnel give the best results. 
11. Against field works of any strength, field artillery of the power 
of our guns would have but little damaging effect. As the Dartmoor 
committee showed conclusively, a 1 lb. bursting charge had only a 
small effect on earthworks, under that there was little or none. A shell 
of larger capacity, and with a gun-cotton bursting charge , can be the only 
solution of this question ; it would seem impossible that any shell large 
enough to be effective if filled with powder could be carried in the 
field. All that field artillery proper can hope to do, is to keep down 
the fire of the defenders by a heavy shrapnel fire on the parapets, and 
to weaken or destroy their artillery by the use of shrapnel or common 
shell, as circumstances may render necessary. 
