Shrapnel shell takes its name from Lieutenant Shrapnel, who was its inventor about the end of last century, but the projectile began to be used only in 1808. Fig. 105_a_ is a section showing the shell as a case containing a number of spherical bullets, of which in the larger shells there are very many, the interspaces being filled with rosin, poured in when melted; the bullets are thus prevented from moving about. The figure shows the shell without the fuse or percussion apparatus, which screws into the hollow at the front. The bursting charge of gunpowder is behind the bullets, and when it explodes they travel forward with a greater velocity than the shell, but with trajectories more or less radiating, carrying with them wide-spreading destruction and death. A shrapnel shell may be said to be a short cannon containing its charge of powder in a thick chamber at the breech end; the sides of the fore part of the shell are thinner than those of the chamber, and may be said to form the barrel of the cannon. This cannon is loaded up to the muzzle with round balls, which vary with the shell in size. An iron disc between the powder and the bullets represents the wad used in ordinary fowling-pieces. A false conical head is attached to the shell, so that its outward appearance is very similar to that of an ordinary cylindro-conoidal shell: that is to say, it looks like a very large long Enfield bullet. The spinning motion which had been communicated to the shell by the rifling of the gun from which it had been fired causes the barrel filled with bullets to point in the direction of the object at which the gun has been aimed. Consequently, when the shrapnel shell is burst, or rather fired off, the bullets which it contained are streamed forward with actually greater velocity than that at which the shell had been moving; and the effect produced is similar to firing grape and canister from a smooth-bore cannon at a short range. [Illustration: FIG. 105_a_.—_The Shrapnel and Segment Shells._ ]