was that made use of in the manufacture
of bullets. It is very simple, very easily explained,
and singularly satisfactory. The lead,
melted in a furnace, is poured out in a stream
as thin and liquid as water, and as bright as
quicksilver, into a long iron tube, about a foot,
or perhaps more, in diameter, and rising in a
perpendicular position to the height of eight or
nine feet. As soon as the metal has had time
to set, but not to become cool, a mighty mass
of iron, of cylindrical form, and fitting exactly
into the tube which contains the molten lead,
descends upon it from above. This great iron
mass is perforated upwards, throughout its
whole length, with a small hole of the exact
diameter of a bullet. What is the lead to do
now, under this extreme compression? There is
but one course open to it, which is to rush up
through the small hole. It does so, and comes
out at the top of the iron press in a long line,
which is first wound upon reels and then conveyed
to another part of the Factories, where it
is chopped into pieces of the required form,
which, by-the-by, is very much that of a long,
narrow thimble. The old round bullet is
almost entirely superseded now by this one of
oblong shape, though, it is difficult to say, with
the amount of discussion which is now going on
upon the subject of rifles and rifle charges, now
long this may be the case. The writer has one
of these thimble-like bullets before him at this
moment, with the little box-wood plug and the
Admiralty broad arrow on its thinnest edge,
complete. As he examines it, noting the dull,
hard point at its end, and poising the bullet in
his hand, he thinks with sorrow how well that
deadly weight is formed to crush the subtle
and tender mechanism of some organ more
intricately beautiful a million-fold than the most
complex and delicate piece of machinery that
can be found even among the triumphs of man's
invention which are exhibited in this strangely
terrible place.

A strangely terrible place indeed, when one
comes to think of it—a place where courteous
and urbane gentlemen, who subscribe to hospitals
and other charities, and who would not
hurt a fly, retire into their "studios" and
mildly spend a morning in taxing their brains
to devise an invention which will cause the
death calculations inscribed upon a fuse to
work more truly, and to carry a greater certainty
and a greater amount of destruction with them.
Strange to think that this is so, and that, as
things are, it is inevitable, and even right; and that
the ingenious gentleman who has found out that
a shell filled with red hot iron will sprinkle a
fountain of death around it on its bursting, more
completely than one containing a charge of ice-
cold bullets, was doing his duty when, with all
the cheerfulness which a successful morning's
work engenders, he communicated his pleasant
little discovery to the War-office.

After examining the process by which the
rifle-bullet is made, and which has just been
described, your Eye-witness next followed his conductor
to the workshop where the fuses are
constructed. These important instruments, which
are placed in the inside of the shell, contain the
deadly matter which causes it to explode at the
proper moment, and are marked with a graduated
scale, by means of which it can be determined
to a second how long a time shall elapse
between the moment when it leaves the mouth of
the mortar and the moment when it bursts into
fragments. Your Eye-witness was much struck
by the immense number of processes through
which one of these small instruments (not bigger
than a beer-tap) has to go before it is completed,
and by the regularity with which it
passes on from one operation to another of cutting,
turning, tapering, and perforating. This
fuse machinery is capable of providing eight
thousand fuses per day, and is mainly worked
by young lads, who are employed here in vast
numbers. There was one amongst them who,
especially caught the attention of your Eye-
witness. He was a pale and sickly lad, who,
while working at one of these deadly little
engines of carnage, had stuck into one of the
holes of the machine at which he worked, a
bunch of red sweet-william.

Percussion-caps stamped out of the sheet
copper, and lapped up at the sides into the
required shape, are turned out here at a rate of
which your Eye-witness can give no idea by
figures. They are then filled by one shake of
the machinery with the requisite grains of
detonating powder; and one drop of varnish, to
hold this in its place, having fallen into each,
the cap is finished, and turns out such a delicate
little toy, that an extra allowance is always given
to the soldiers in action to make up for those
which are lost in their efforts to take them up
in their thick and horny fingers.

The making of the cartridges—the thick
paper tubes in which the bullet and its charge
of powder are encased, ready to be rammed into
the rifle—is almost entirely the work of boys.
These youngsters are not so industrious, it seems,
as they might be, and various "dodges" are
tried to make them work. Over each boy's head,
for instance, is placed upon a framework, a ticket
showing the amount of work turned out by the
individual in question during the past week.
This is a good idea, appealing strongly to their
ambition and their sense of shame. Here, as
throughout the Arsenal, the plan of working
by "the piece" rather than by time, is
found to answer. A man who is paid by "the
piece," obviously having every inducement to
get a bigger "piece" done, than he who is paid
by the hour. The hour wears away of itself and
the money is won, but the piece by no means
does itself, and if not done, is of course not
paid for. Your Eye-witness thought he could
tell by the look of the boys in the Cartridge
Factory which had made most during the last
week, without reference to their tickets, and
certainly there was no occasion to look at that
suspended over the seat of one little man who
had fallen fast asleep, with his head upon a heap
of cartridges.

There are some branches of manufactory in