SHORT NOTES ON PROFESSIONAL SUBJECTS. 
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64. On Lysons 5 Improved Signals for Rifle Practice : 
The stimulus given to rifle practice in this country by the Wimbledon meetings, by the 
regulations in the Volunteer Force with reference to efficients, and by the rigorous 
enforcement of it in the Regular Army in all its details, has succeeded in rendering 
a range as familiar an object in every town and village, as a cricket ground, or 
bowling-alley. While, however, the improvement in shooting has been continuous 
and marvellous, the apparatus for recording and conducting the practice has 
remained of the rudest description. Communication between the firing party and 
the butt is limited as a rule to the brief vocabulary of a couple of buglers and a 
red flag; and the wind renders this arrangement uncertain, and often useless. 
At rifle practice, uncertainty means danger; and that there are not more accidents 
is not due to the existing system, but in spite of it. A bugle is of no use what¬ 
ever at long ranges when the wind is blowing across the range, or even at 
comparatively short ranges when the force of the wind is great, as it is on river-side 
ranges and breezy downs; and should the wind be blowing up or down the range, 
the red flag, blown end on, is frequently invisible, more especially in the evenings, 
when most of our volunteer class shooting is carried on. Should it be necessary 
to communicate with the marker, the tedious method has to be employed of sending 
a man to him, thus delaying the practice, and unsteadying the man for shooting, 
should the messenger have belonged to the firing party. Tedious, however, as this 
method is, it is a very general one; for buglers are rarely to be secured on country 
ranges. What is the general result? Rather than delay the practice, the men 
become careless as to many points which they should learn from the marker, and 
which would correct their firing; and their shooting is inferior to what it might 
easily become. A miss is only known as such by the absence of a chronicling flag 
from the butt, and no information is given to the unhappy marksman, as to whether 
he is firing high or low, to the right, or to the left. 
To remedy all. these defects, a new system of signalling has been invented by 
Captain and Adjutant Lysons, of the 1st Administrative Battalion, Aberdeenshire 
Rifle Volunteers, which the writer of this paper has seen in operation. Its success 
has been unequivocal; its simplicity is great; it is not liable to derangement; and 
at the longest ranges it can be worked by the rifleman and marker alone with the 
greatest ease. With it no bugles are required; the wind cannot affect it; no 
running up and down the range is necessary ; communication with the marker is 
instant, and conversation can be maintained with ease between him and the firing. 
The cost of the whole apparatus is small; it is perfectly durable, and could be left 
permanently standing on a range, so that a couple of men could carry on practice 
without any assistance, one firing, the other at the butt, and do as much in one 
hour, as under the existing system can be done in three. 
* By Captain and Adjutant F. Duncan, R.A., M.A., D.C.L., F.G.S., F.R.G.S, 
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