A permanent select committee was formed, consisting of certain regimental and staff officers of artillery, at Dum-Dum and in the neighbourhood, to whom every question involving change in the _matériel_ equipment of the department was to be submitted in the first instance, and their opinion was to be forwarded to assist Government in coming to a decision, and they were soon fully occupied with the important questions of windage, brass ordnance, and patterns of light field-carriages. In August the lascars of the regiment were very much reduced; the use of drag-ropes as a means of moving guns, except for trifling distances, or out of a difficulty, was given up, and with that, the necessity of such strong bodies of lascars with artillery companies ceased. They were reduced to a detail of one havildar, two naiks, and twenty-four privates, to each troop and European company, and taken away entirely from the native battalions; the men thus struck off from the regiment were formed into sixteen companies of store lascars, each consisting of one subahdar, one jemadar, four havildars, four naiks, and eighty privates, and were posted to the different magazines. But this arrangement was not found to answer, and the lascar companies were, on the war breaking out in 1824, increased to forty privates, partly, perhaps, from the insufficiency of Europeans to keep the companies up to their proper strength. An interpreter was allowed to the regiment at head-quarters, and attached to the golundaz companies at Dum-Dum. Lieutenant-Colonel A. MacLeod was appointed commandant on Major-General Hardwicke’s sailing for Europe in December, and with Colonel MacLeod the command of the artillery in the field ceased; the brigade-majorship was also abolished, and Captain Tennant, who held it, was appointed assistant secretary to the Military Board. In February five companies were added to the golundaz battalion, raising its number to twenty companies, to meet the exigency of the war with Ava. In June, to meet the deficiency of Europeans, three additional companies of lascars of eighty-four men each were raised; four privates were added to each golundaz company, and the lascar companies increased, as above mentioned, to forty men each, those who had been transferred to the store lascars being taken back again. In May, a fundamental change took place in the Indian army; the battalions were formed into regiments, and the officers of all branches of the service were placed on the same footing as to the chances of promotion, by the regiments being of equal strength in this particular. This new organization caused a considerable degree of promotion throughout the army, and in this the artillery shared. The officers of the regiment continued, as previously, to rise in one general gradation list, and the regiment was to be composed of