g or perfecting
improvements. He has got a pocket edition of a machine-gun made of
tempered steel and weighing only 27 lb., as against our old one, which
is of gun-metal and weighs 58 lb.--a material difference when it is a
question of an advance. The new one, he explains somewhat illogically,
with paternal pride, can be carried into action "like a baby." Having
decided to give it a trial we carried it tenderly to a quarry and
proceeded to "feed" it with a belt of cartridges. The Instructor set up
a small stick against the bank of a gravel quarry and returned and
adjusted the tangent-sight at 100 on the standard. He got the fore-sight
and back-sight in a line on the stick, seized the traversing-handles,
released the safety-catch, and pressed the button with his right thumb
with the persistency of a man who cannot make the waiter answer the
electric bell. "Tap--tap--tap." There was a series of explosions as
though the sparking plug of a motor-bicycle was playing tricks. The
target danced like a thing possessed. It hopped and skipped and curtsied
under that deadly stream of bullets. Then he slowly swept that gravel
bank with the traversing handles till the pebbles jumped like
hailstones. "I think she'll do," he remarked appreciatively as he folded
up the tripod.

The R.E. is the Army's school of technology. To do a survey or make a
bridge or lay a telephone is all in the day's work. But your sapper is
a man of ideas, and is for ever seeking out new inventions. So he has
turned his attention to chemistry, and "R.E." has a chemical corps which
has put aside the blow-pipe and the test-tube at home to come out and
study the applied chemistry of war. Just now they are engaged in
discovering the most effective method of laying noxious gases. Copper
vessels of ammonia in a trench to disperse the gas when it gets there
are all very well, but by that time you may have more pressing
attentions of the enemy to engage you; the thing is to prevent the gas
getting there. Hence ingenious minds are considering how to project with
a spray something upon the advancing fog which will bring it to earth in
the form of an innocuous compound. Spray that something over the
parapet, and if you can spray it far enough and wide enough you may
precipitate the deadly green and brown mists into chlorides or bromides
which will be as harmless as bleaching-powder and not less salubrious.

Others have turned their attention to automatic flares. You can