ARTILLERY AND MUSKETRY FIRE. 191 
battery of 4 guns with horses and detachments complete under service 
conditions, while three other series were of an experimental nature and 
intended to show the power of the Lee-Metford rifle. The effect of 
these latter are omitted from the calculations made for comparison 
of effect with that of guns, since not having been fired at service 
targets they offered no data. 
12,000 rounds of Lee-Metford (cordite) ammunition were fired: of 
these 10,000 rounds were used in series 1 to 8. This amount is of 
course not nearly sufficient to give any reliable basis of calculation, 
but the calculations are interesting though only of a tentative nature, 
and if approved of may give grounds for hoping for a larger amount 
of ammunition on another occasion. 
For comparison with the effect of musketry we take the mean of all 
rounds fired by guns this year at Glenbeigh; and it should be re= 
membered that most of these rounds were ranging rounds and that a 
large proportion of the shell fired were common shell, the effect of 
which is practically nil; of course, when shrapnel were used for ranging 
some effect may be put down to the ranging rounds, of these the 
average number in each series was 13, of time shrapnel in ordinary 
fire only 8; so that it will be seen, that as soon as fire had become 
effective, it was stopped owing to want of ammunition. 
The average duration of ordinary fire was in fact less than two 
minutes. 
The units compared are a battery of 6 guns and a company of 100 
men, as these under normal circumstances take up practically the same 
amount of space in the firing line, though the battery could work 
equally well at a reduced interval and the frontage taken up by the 
company might also be reduced though not so conveniently. 
The target in all cases was of about equal frontage to that of a 
battery or company. 
The method of calculation employed is as follows: Taking the data in 
the table of statistics as a basis, there is no difficulty in working out the 
per centage of target destroyed for any given weight of ammunition 
in the different series. For instance,in the 1st series, if 900 rounds 
weighing about half a hundred weight destroy nearly 4 per cent. of 
the target we might neglect the theory of probability and assume that 
an expenditure of twice or three times as much ammunition ought to 
ensure the destruction of 8 or 12 per cent. of the target without 
running any very great risk of error, as the number of dummies hit 
is very small—if however in series 12 we made the same assumption 
we ought to expect the destruction of 88 or 133 per cent. of the target 
in each case, which is manifestly absurd. 
Similarly there is no great objection to deducing the effect to be 
expected from 100 rifles firing for one minute from that of 180, or even 
of 90 rifles firing for four or five minutes or more, but it would be 
unsafe to trust such a deduction as applying to 1000 riflesor for a 
considerable length of time. im 5 
The weight of each round of Lee-Metford ammunition is 1 oz. 
Hach 12-pr. shrapnel weighs 12 lbs. 8 ozs., and the: eartridge 4 lbs., 
total 16°5 lbs. When cordite ammunition is introduced the total 
