ng pressed
out of the magazine before the latter is inserted in the rifle, there is
a strong spring placed vertically in one side of this box, the curved
upper end of which bears upon the top cartridge; when the magazine is in
its place in the shoe, this side spring is so acted upon that it ceases
to hold down the cartridges in the box.

To use the rifle as a single loader, formerly the magazine had to be
detached, when a spring plate in the shoe, which is pushed aside by the
insertion of the magazine, starts back into its place and nearly fills
the magazine slot, so as to prevent cartridges falling through to the
ground when fed into the chamber by hand. The later pattern, however,
has two notches on the magazine for the catch, C, to engage in. When the
magazine is inserted in the slot only as far as the upper notch, the
rifle can be used only as a single loader, but on pressing the box home
to the second notch, the magazine immediately comes into play.

The magazine can be released from the slot by an upward pressure on the
lower projecting end of the magazine catch, C, which is covered by the
trigger guard.

_Improved Lee_.--This rifle is precisely similar in principle to the
Lee, the chief difference being that the magazine is permanently fixed
in its slot underneath the shoe, and in front of the trigger guard. The
cartridges are inserted from above. There is a stop by means of which
the cartridges can be prevented rising up into the shoe, and which forms
a sort of false bottom to the slot in the latter, so that the arm can be
used as a single loader.

_Lee-Burton_.--The bolt action is the same as the Lee, but the box
magazine is attached to the right side of the shoe, instead of being
underneath, as in that rifle. When the magazine is raised to its higher
position, the cartridges pass successively into the shoe by the action
of gravity alone, and are thus pressed home into the chamber by the
closing of the bolt.

[Illustration: FIG. 11.]

A number of the Lee-Burton and improved Lee rifles are now being
manufactured for issue to the troops, in order to undergo experimental
trials on an extended scale.

Several other magazine rifles have the box central magazine, but placed
in different positions as regards the shoe and the axis of the bore. In
the original pattern of the Jarman (Sweden and Norway), the magazine is
affixed to the upper part of the shoe, inclined at a considerable angle
to the right hand (see