“The more rapidly a ball is made to reach its goal, the nearer will the line described by it approach to a straight one, and the less will it roll. It is possible that the old musket-ball did not roll much during the first fifty or hundred yards of its flight, and that the accuracy of shooting with it will have been less on this account. A ball which does not roll, may be said to be ‘in position;’ there is inherent in it a fixed tendency to deviate from the line in which it is projected. Now a shell which rolls much by reason of its comparatively slow motion, is ever tending to stray in different directions, and, therefore, a movement in the wrong direction, at one moment, being compensated for the next by a corresponding movement in the opposite direction, it may be by this means a recipient of an amount of accidental compensation to which, perhaps, the musket-ball is a stranger. “Such being the manifest effect of projections upon the surface of a shell, it is not difficult to imagine what must be the unseen effect of projections on the surface of a rifle ball. One projection, placed without regard to effect upon such surface, would make the ball jog and oscillate much after the manner that has been described. Two or more of proper form and construction will, on the contrary, if properly placed upon a projectile, hold it steady, and so impart to it a fixed tendency to digress, thereby preparing it to be usefully operated upon by spiral motion. “So much as has been said will, I think, suffice to disprove that not unfrequently entertained notion to the effect that the light end of a bullet is kept forward by the operation of the spiral motion imparted to it. I could cite more than one person and pamphlet (General Jacob), apparently under the influence of this belief, but which certainly does not accord with theory, and the practical incorrectness of which was thus manifested to me.” The Whitworth rifle, which was introduced to the world with a clarion flourish from the _Times_, has not made any very rapid progress toward perfection. It still drags out an existence, it is true, but its boasted superiority is all a myth; as time and experience will show. Like the former, but more meritorious, invention of General Jacob, it is based on an unsound principle, an untenable theory, good only in seeming, which collapses when grasped by the hand of practical experience. The peculiarity connected with this weapon is the extraordinary circumstances under which it first saw the light:--It was produced by the aid of Plutus, dragging in reputed science to fashion on the instant a weapon superior to the tardy results of three centuries; though during that period numbers of talented individuals had devoted their lives to the study of gunnery.