For breech-pieces each ingot must be reduced in diameter by forging at least 40 per cent.; in case tubes are forged upon a mandrel from bored ingots, the walls must be reduced in thickness by forging at least 50 per cent. Forgings are to be annealed, oil tempered under such conditions as will assure their resistance and again annealed, and no piece will be accepted unless the last process has been an annealing one. The forging must be left with a uniformly fine grain. All these excellent results are the direct outcomes of the report made in 1884 by the Ordnance Board. 1st. That the army and navy should each have its own gun-factory; 2d. That the parts should be shipped by the steel-makers ready for finishing and assembling in guns; 3d. That the government should not undertake the production of steel of its own accord; 4th. That the Watervliet Arsenal, West Troy, N. Y., should be the site of the army gun-factory; and 5th. That the Washington navy-yard should be the site of the navy gun-factory. No action was taken upon the recommendation to establish gun-factories; but at the first session of the Forty-ninth Congress an appropriation of $1,000,000 was made for the armament of the navy, of which sum so much as the Secretary determined might be employed for the creation of a plant. Under this permission the gun-factory at the Washington navy-yard is now being established. The construction of the breech-loading steel guns for the new cruisers has been energetically pushed. Slight modifications in the original designs were made necessary by the adoption of slower burning powder, which carried the pressure still farther forward in the bore, and, in the case of some foreign guns, caused their destruction. Though our guns have not suffered from any such accident, it has been deemed a wise precaution to give the 8-inch guns of the _Atlanta_ two additional chase hoops, and to hoop all other pieces of this calibre to the muzzle. From a memorandum kindly furnished by Lieutenant Bradbury, United States navy, it is learned that the number and calibre of the new guns now finished, under construction, or projected, are as follows: