642 
COMMENDED ESSAY, 1892 . 
conduct of artillery in the field being carefully avoided for the present. 
The afternoon parades are for Fire Discipline, ranging, and battery 
gnn drill, and should be supplemented by lectures. When these sub¬ 
jects are thoroughly mastered on the barrack-square they may be 
transferred to the drill-ground, but it is essential that the greatest care 
be taken to ensure the thorough training of the various parts of the 
battery before this instructional promotion takes place, for the pre¬ 
mature combination of manoeuvre aud Fire Discipline will only waste 
the all too-scanty valuable time which the mounted battery spends on 
the drill-ground (owing to the necessity of correcting errors that 
should previously have been elimated), and mistakes may easily creep 
in unobserved and gradually crystalise into bad habits demanding 
much time and care to eradicate. 
We must here, therefore, retrace our steps somewhat to consider the 
subjects of laying, ranging, and control under fire which, though of at 
least equal importance with gun drill proper, have been passed over in 
silence up till now owing to their concerning the smaller number. 
Layers. 
The training of layers is duly prescribed by regulation, but the pre¬ 
sent system of their qualifying once yearly is not sufficient to ensure 
that degree of reliability and rapidity which is so necessary. The 
consequences of a ranging round being wrongly laid (or set) may be 
so disastrous in their effect on the rapidity with which the battery is 
ranged—for ranging, once the enemy opens an effective shrapnel fire, 
is admittedly almost impossible—that it behoves us in peace time to 
organise victory as far as may be and reduce the possibilities of error 
to a minimum. 
Many men who lay excellently in barrack-square or on drill-ground 
are, from nervousness, very liable to error in the excitement of action or 
even the calmer joys of service practice ; and the only way to procure 
sureness and accuracy is by constant practice, resulting in almost 
mechanical manipulation. A layer should be so familiar with tangent 
scale, telescopic sight, and clinometer that the elevation or range are 
set almost by instinct, and the gun laid almost without the necessity of 
thought. The following system has been tried and seems to produce 
very satisfactory results, as far as it is possible to judge. 
There is a weekly examination for trained layers consisting of six 
rounds according to regulation, and the results are kept in a battery 
register, not only the marks being noted, but also any causes of failure, 
such as inaccurate setting or laying, or over time. Success dispenses 
from re-examination for a fortnight, but failure to qualify entails joining 
for a week the standing class for the training of would-be layers. In 
one respect only does this periodic examination differ from the regula¬ 
tion one for the qualification for layers : two rounds of indirect laying 
with clinometer and aiming picket—one round in front and one round 
in rear—are substituted for two of the rounds with direct laying, so 
that two rounds are laid with tangent sight, two with telescopic sight, 
and two with clinometer. After very little practice the time allowed 
