The bullets in both cases were spherical, and as the earlier pattern had a seven-grooved barrel, there was so much difficulty in introducing the bullets into the muzzles that mallets had to be used. The bullet of the Brunswick rifle was encircled by a projecting band, which fitted into two rather deep grooves diametrically opposite to each other in the barrel. This bullet, wrapped in some slightly greased material, could be readily dropped into the muzzle, and rammed home without difficulty. Moreover, whereas in Baker’s rifle the grooves made only a quarter of a turn in the length of the barrel, the grooves of the Brunswick rifle made more than one complete turn. This was so much an improvement on “Brown Bess” that the effective range was more than doubled. For the rank and file of the infantry regiments the flint-lock smooth-bore musket was, however, the regulation weapon until 1842, when it was superseded by the percussion musket. The percussion-cap is now comparatively little used, as, since the introduction of cartridges containing their own means of ignition, it is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. The copper percussion-cap, in the form it still retains, was invented about 1816, and was universally adopted for sporting-guns a long time before it was used for the military weapon. In 1842 the percussion musket was definitely adopted as the weapon of the British army, but up to that date the flint-locks still continued to be made at Birmingham. The barrel of the percussion musket then issued was shortly afterwards rifled, when about the year 1852 the Minié system was adopted, and the Government awarded to M. Minié, a Frenchman, the sum of £20,000 for the bullet he had invented. What the meaning of this improvement was may now be explained, and we must begin by mentioning the various forms of grooving, or, at least, such forms as found some approval during the present century, for grooved barrels had been tried long before. At first the grooves appear to have been intended merely to receive the fouling, and these were often made without any twist or spiral, but parallel to the axis of the barrel. The grooves are hollow channels of greater or less depth, and of various forms; square, triangular, rounded, or of such a form that the inner line of a section of the barrel would present the form of a ratchet wheel. The numbers of the grooves made use of have varied between two and twelve, or more, and different rates of twist, or numbers of turns of the spiral in the length of the barrel have been resorted to, these ranging from half a turn to twelve turns. The Brunswick rifle had been found wanting in accuracy, when at length in 1846 General Jacobs proposed the adoption of the conical bullet with projecting spiral ridges which fitted into grooves cut in the rifle barrel. The difficulty in using muzzle-loading rifles consisted in the force required to ram down the bullet, which had