work, and sent in no fewer than fifty different
plans; or rather, gunsmiths and others, for this
is a very favourite subject with many persons not
immediately connected with the trade. The
War Office entrusted the examination of these
plans to the Ordnance Select Committee, by
whom all were rejected except eight; and these
eight were handed over to a sub-committee for
detailed experiment. Five of these plans are
breech-loading systems in which the charge is
ignited by cap and nipple in the ordinary way,
while the other three are adapted for cartridges
carrying their own means of ignition. Each
competitor was furnished with six Enfield rifles
chosen by Colonel Dickson, and well tested for
soundness and accuracy at five hundred yards'
distance (greater distance seldom being wanted
for troops of the line, whatever they may be for
skirmishers and sharpshooters). The gunmakers
set to work, and returned the rifles to the War
Office, with a thousand rounds of such ammunition
as each competitor might deem most
useful.

To describe the metamorphosis which each
Enfield rifle underwent would be the work of a
gunmaker or an artillery officer; and to such
persons only, indeed, would the description itself
be intelligible. There is a good deal said about
chambers, thimbles, rings, bolts, hammers,
nipples, breech-stoppers, plungers, hooks, cases,
wads, plugs, locks, levers, cylinders, pistons,
hinges, and other delicate bits of apparatus, all
belonging to the rear end of an Enfield rifle,
when converted from a muzzle-loader to a breech-
loader. In one system of transformation, nothing
is left of the veritable Enfield but the stock; in
another, the barrel is lengthened to admit the
new apparatus; but in most of them the barrel
is shortened two or three inches for this purpose.
The sub-committee caused the altered rifles to be
fired off a great number of times, in order to
apply various tests to them. As concerns
rapidity of firing, one and all beat the Enfield
hollow, generally two to one, showing that
breech-loading is better than muzzle-loading in
this particular. They were next tried as to
accuracy of flight, at a target five hundred yards
off. The unchanged Enfield here beat its
competitors, though all were wonderfully near the
mark. When every one of the rifles had been
fired two hundred and seventy times without
cleaning, they were taken to pieces at Enfield.
All the breech arrangements were sound; but
some of the stocks told of hard wear, having
been too much cut away in the converting.
Then the rifles were pitted against each other
for range, penetration, initial velocity, and
recoil; or, rather, two rifles on each system having
been compared in regard to rapidity, accuracy,
and fouling, four more on each system were
compared with reference to the other qualities
just named. The penetration was measured by
the number of half-inch elm boards, well wetted
and placed in a frame half an inch apart, that a
bullet could go through at thirty yards. These
several experiments occupied many weeks of last
spring to perform, and the results were tabulated
by the committee with the same care as a school
inspector or competitive examiner tabulates his
"marks." Thus, the rifle shots averaged about
half a yard lateral deviation at five hundred
yards, and four feet at eight hundred yards;
one shot penetrated seventeen wetted elm
planks; another took the lead in many of the
conditions of general efficiency; while a third
was the best of those which carry their own
means of ignition in the charge (papier-mâché
cartridge, with a brass cap at the base carrying
the detonating compound, and lubricated for
passing into the rifle with wax and tallow), and
fired more rapidly than the others.

The upshot of all this is, that the machines at
Enfield are, many of them, undergoing such
alteration as will fit them for the manufacture of
breech-loading rifles. There is a sort of
interregnum in the place, King Muzzle having been
dethroned in favour of another claimant to
supremacy. It seems pretty well agreed that
the Enfield rifle, for the general service of the
army, is ultimately to be a breech-loader. May
it pierce any imaginable number of elm planks,
at any conceivable distance!

QUESTIONS TO THE CUCKOO.

I

WAS it not some lover
Taught you that one name
(Two syllables repeated
Year by year the same)?
Changeless bird, and faithful,
From the Afric sands
Once more come to greet us,
In these greener lands.

II

Was it not magician
(Some dark wizard man)
Changed thee from a Pharaoh
By a talisman,
Till in English meadow
One should learn the spell
That would break the prison
Into which you fell?

III

Pyramids, their builders,
Cuckoo, tell me now?
Zebra-bird so quaintly
Flitting bough to bough!
Did Jugurtha's horses
So outstrip the wind?
Tell me now the secret
Ishmael's race to bind.

IV

Didst thou see when Carthage,
In a fire simoom,
Fell before the Roman
With his brow in gloom?
Wert thou in near palm-tree,
When proud Egypt's queen
Bared the fairest bosom
Eyes had ever seen,