The mention of armor plates inevitably brings to our minds the consideration of ordnance, but I do not intend to say even a few words on this head of invention and improvement--a topic to which a whole evening might well be devoted--because only three years ago my talented predecessor in this chair, Sir William Armstrong, made it the subject of his inaugural address, and dealt with it in so masterly and exhaustive a style as to render it absolutely impossible for me to usefully add anything to his remarks. I cannot, however, leave this branch of the subject without mentioning, not a piece of ordnance, but a small arm, invented since the date of Sir William's address. I mean the Maxim machine gun. This is not only one of the latest, but is certainly one of the most ingenious pieces of mechanism that has been devised. The single barrel fires the Martini-Henry ammunition; the cartridges are placed in loops upon a belt, and when this belt is introduced to the gun, and some five or six cartridges have been drawn in by as many reciprocations of a handle, the gun is ready to commence firing. After the first shot, which must be fired by the pulling of a trigger in the ordinary way, the gun will automatically continue to send out shot after shot, until the whole of the cartridges on the belt are exhausted; and if care is taken before this happens to link on to the tail of the first belt the head of a second one, and another belt to this, and so on, the firing will be automatically continuous, and at a rate anywhere between one shot per minute and six hundred shots per minute, dependent on the will of the person in charge of the gun, the whole of the operations of loading, firing, and ejecting the cartridge being performed by the energy of the recoil. This perfectly automatic action enables the man who works the gun to devote his whole attention to directing it, and as it is carried on a pivot and can be elevated and depressed, he can, while the gun is firing, aim the bullets to any point he may choose.