KANE’S LIST AND MACDONALD’S HISTORY OF DRESS. 359 
In 1815 the Prince Regent was the leader of Society and it is safe 
to say that in his mind, dress and uniform counted for much, so that, 
what with court and society functions and the passing of officers on 
leave to and from France, the question of the dress of officers became 
one of great interest. The peace of 1815 and the return of British 
troops from the occupation of France and Belgium were followed by a 
large reduction in the strength of the Royal Artillery; to such a point 
was this reduction carried, that in 1848 Sir Robert Gardiner (No. 979) 
reported that in the whole of Great Britain there were only thirty-four 
guns fit to take the field and in case of emergency fourteen guns were 
the utmost that could be put in the field from Woolwich ; the Garrison 
Artillery in the same way was without men to work the guns of the 
various forts both at home and abroad. 
Under these circumstances so far as “ Kanes List ” is concerned I 
shall treat as one the period of Plates XIV.—XIX. from 1815 to 1850. 
During this long period of peace, broken only by the sending of a British 
Legion to Spain in 1836 and of expeditions against the native disturb¬ 
ers of various British Colonies, the-interest of Artillery officers in the 
strictly professional portion of their duties did not suffice for many of 
those with keen minds who turned their attention to various branches of 
science. An officer who probably influenced a number of cadets in 
favour of science, was William Mudge (No. 584) who in addition to 
having charge of the Trigonometrical Survey of Great Britain was made 
Lieut.-Governor of the Royal Military Academy in July, 1809 and as 
such took particular care of the instruction of cadets in surveying and 
topographical drawing. Two other officers, whose scientific work had 
great influence on their brother officers, were (Sir) Edward Sabine 
(No. 1180) and Francis Rawdon Chesney (No. 1239) while (Sir) Howard 
Douglas (No. 783) rendered invaluable services both to the Army 
generally and to the Royal Navy, and after leaving the Regiment in 
1804 on transfer to the Royal Military College; his works on Naval 
Gunnery continued to be the standard books on that subject down to 
the disappearance of smooth-bore ordnance. Sabine made for himself 
a name famous in the world of science and achieved the summit of ambi¬ 
tion for an English man of science by election to the position of 
President of the Royal Society, which post he filled from 1861 to 1871. 
His principal works were those on the subject of magnetic variations 
and observations, experiments connected with the swing of a pendulum 
and also on Polar research ; his war services include the Peninsula and 
Canada. There is a beautiful portrait of Sabine, by Watts, in the Roy¬ 
al Artillery Mess, Woolwich. 
Chesney’s best work was that connected with the exploration and 
survey of a railway route to India by the Euphrates Valley but he also 
made one of the first surveys for a Suez Canal and is believed to have 
influenced M. de Lesseps by the result of his survey; a curious fact in 
Chesney’s life is, that when only nine year’s of age he went out in 1798 
on service in the field as a sub-lieutenant of the County Down Volun¬ 
teers against the United Irishmen. 
