Very recently a statement appeared in the press that, owing to some ill-made cartridges being served out to the troops in India, the men found it almost impossible to load their Enfield rifles at all; having to call in the aid of trees and stones against which to butt the ramrod, in order to force the bullet home. The same account attributed this defect to the careless construction of these cartridges by the contractors. This, however, is unjust; all cartridges for the Enfield rifles being alone produced in the laboratory at Woolwich; and hence the defect is the more unpardonable. It is easy to conceive that in India, where the heat is intense, the grease on the cartridge might have disappeared; the unctuous deposit of gunpowder on the interior of the barrel is also rendered more adhesive, and necessarily offers greater obstruction to the ramming down of the bullet. The very slight difference between the diameter of the bullet and that of the bore, or windage, must necessarily add to the difficulty under such circumstances; but if half a size, or a few decimals of diameter, were taken from the sides of the bullet and added to its length, the difficulty would be effectually removed: with increased length, and increasing means of expansion, if necessary, such an occurrence could never take place. The original expanding bullet was intended to fill up the difference of three sizes of gauge; surely, then, there can be no difficulty in expanding a much less diameter of bullet one half, or even full one size of gauge. Where would be the difficulty in having the bullet 26-bore, or even smaller, and expanding it to 25. The occurrence, indeed, of such a fact as that alluded to is to an intelligent mind quite incomprehensible; it could only arise from gross incompetency--some cobbling with the bullet’s cup in the pressing, or perhaps enlargement by wear, or more likely still from the pulp-made cartridge paper. That this difficulty has been experienced is obvious; and the inference is strong, that the official managers of these affairs are still in the midst of a long experiment: it is clear that they are not perfectly masters of the practice of gunnery, and it is almost time the people of this country had their work better done. It is more than probable that, instead of meeting this difficulty with the proper spirit of improvement, they will fly off at some other tangent, and adopt the nostrum of some “arrant quack;” thus effectually adding to the complication. Each regiment ought to have moulds, and the means of making their cartridges on such emergencies; a body of provident officials ought to attend to this, that a repetition of it may be avoided.