sible, and in the month of
March they went to the seat of war. May is hardly passed by, and the sad
fact discovered in the Crimea is echoed back on our shores, that after
thirty rounds the soldiers may right about face or trust to cold steel.
I think my youngest boy--if I had one--would have suggested testing the
improvement before indulging the army with the weapon. Perhaps the
authorities went on the principle that a rifle is a rifle, and a ball is
a ball, and therefore that it must be all right. It might as well be
said a chancellor is a chancellor, and a black dose is a black dose;
therefore, because an able Aesculapius had prescribed a draught which
had proved eminently useful to bilious Benjamin, it must agree equally
well with lymphatic William.--Never mind, my dear John Bull, sixpence
more in the pound Income-tax will remedy the little oversight.

Three years have elapsed since these observations were penned, and
behold a giant competitor has entered the field, threatening utter
annihilation to the three-groove (or Enfield) rifle and the Pritchett
ball. Mr. Whitworth (whose mechanical powers have realized an accuracy
almost fabulous), after a long course of experiments made at the
Government's expence, has produced a rifle with an hexagonal box and
ball, the correctness of which, at 1100 yards, has proved nearly equal
to that of the Enfield at 500 yards, and possessing a penetrating power
of wonderful superiority; the Enfield rifle ball scarcely penetrated 13
half-inch Elm planks. Whitworth's hexagonal ball penetrated 33, and
buried itself in the solid block of wood behind. It remains to be seen
whether this formidable weapon can be made at such a price as to render
it available for military purposes. The hexagonal bore is not a new
invention, some of the Russians having used it in the late Baltic
campaign; but it is doubtless Mr. Whitworth's wonderful accuracy of
construction that is destined to give it celebrity, by arming it with a
power and correctness it wanted before.[CQ] An explosive ball has also
been introduced by Colonel Jacob of Eastern celebrity, which from its
greater flight will prove, when perfected, a more deadly arm than the
old spherical explosive ball invented and forgotten years ago. With the
daily improvements in science, we may soon expect to see Colonel Jacob's
in general use, unless the same principle applied to Whitworth's
hexagonal ball should be found preferable.

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