It is difficult to penetrate the veil of mystery which shrouds the acts of the Council Chamber, so as to ascertain the real author of such vacillating policy; the reasons which induced the equipment of 1827, and which were the accumulated experience of years, were equally cogent in 1828, and that they were sound, every one who has had experience of Indian warfare will vouch. That there is no reason to suppose the change was made consequent on orders from home, we may conclude, for in 1834, we find the Court of Directors “satisfied of the superiority of horses over bullocks for light field-artillery,” directing “their gradual substitution,” an order to which no attention was paid by the then Governor-General. Under these circumstances, rumour, with her hundred tongues, is perhaps not wrong in attributing it to a “malignant influence,” which for a quarter of a century opposed every suggestion for the improvement of the prospects or efficiency of the ordnance branch. A late military member of the Council of India, long secretary to Government in the military department, who, repeating the one argument, equally applicable against every advance, “We won India with bullocks, and why should we not keep it with bullocks?” supported the late Lord W. Bentinck in putting aside the Court’s orders of 1834, and Lord Auckland in paying a slow and partial obedience to them when repeated in 1841. Cotemporary with this retrograde movement, was the reduction of the field-batteries from eight to six pieces each, a good arrangement, had it been accompanied by a proportionate increase in their numbers; but this was not done, and it therefore reduced, by one fourth, the field-artillery, already far too low, in reference to the other branches of the army. The gun contract was at this time transferred from the senior artillery officer at the station to the officer commanding the battery, a very judicious change, as it placed the power in the hands of the person most properly responsible for the efficiency of the battery, and left to the superior officer his proper duty of supervision unfettered by personal considerations.