The objects above enumerated present several varieties of forms. The chief are—1st, spherical, as cannon–balls, grape, musket–shot, and shells; 2d, cylindro–conoidal, as balls belonging to rifled cannon and rifled muskets; 3d, irregular, but generally bounded by linear and jagged edges, as fragments of shells and splinters. A gunshot wound, whether received from a direct or indirect projectile, may be complicated by the entrance of extraneous bodies of various kinds, most commonly portions of the cloth or buttons of the dress worn by the person wounded. Such foreign substances, though not of themselves causing the wound, often have a special bearing on the progress of its cure. Not only the form of outline, but the weight, and in some instances the matter of which the missile is composed, influence the nature of gunshot wounds. In the largest kinds of balls, such as are projected from field–pieces or guns of position, the form offers little subject for consideration to the surgeon. So long as there is momentum enough to carry forward the mass of iron of which these missiles are composed, so long will their weight be the most important ingredient in the production of the wounds inflicted by them. Whether the shot come as a solid cone or bolt from one of the new guns or as a round ball from an ordinary cannon, the injury will be equally destructive to life or limb. The same remark is applicable to the heavier forms of shell, before explosion. The only difference surgeons may look for from the use of cylindro–conoidal balls, or Whitworth bolts applied to cannon, should they become general, independent of increase in the number of direct wounds from greater power and precision of fire, will be the less number of indirect injuries likely to result from their action, as they neither ricochet nor roll as “spent balls” in the manner that spherical shot are accustomed to do. Grape–shot, canister, and spherical case, on striking collectively—that is, before they have spread—as sometimes happens in assaulting or in accidental close proximity to guns in the field, produce the same kinds of injuries as cannon–shot, but individually resemble musket–shot in their effects. Wounds from grape–shot are always of a grave character, not only from the extent of the flesh wound, but also because, from their large diameter and weight, the nerves and vessels of the part struck are less likely to escape injury, if not destruction, than in wounds from the smaller shot projected in canister or spherical case.