To obtain long range with a small long bullet such as is now used, it should rotate at a very high speed. It is well known to artillerists that a projectile of four or more calibers in length has to be rotated at a much higher speed than one of half that length, in order to keep the projectile stiff in the air, and to prevent it from ending over in its flight. To communicate this very high rotary movement to the bullet in the instant of time during which it is passing through the barrel, the rifling of the gun has to exert an enormous torsion on the bullet. Lead, no matter how hardened, is not sufficiently strong, as it will not only strip and pass straight through the gun without taking any rotary movement whatever, but under such very high pressures it behaves like wax, and is thrown from the gun in a distorted mass. The French cover their bullets with German silver, a substance made of nickel, zinc and copper; and in order to put as little strain upon the rifling and projectile as possible, the rifling of the gun is made with an increasing twist, and has no sharp edges. The French rifle is made very strong at the breech and is of tempered steel throughout. In this way the French have made smokeless powder a success--a smokeless powder made substantially of a character such as I have herein described. With smokeless powder, the French rifle imparts a muzzle velocity of 2,000 feet per second to the bullet, with a range of about 2,400 meters. If smokeless powder be divided into sufficiently small grains to be ignited by an ordinary fulminating cap, it would burn too quickly, thereby causing the pressure to mount too high, and without giving the desired velocity. Consequently very large and strong fulminating caps have to be employed. Smokeless powder is not ignited in the same manner as black powder. Something besides ignition is necessary. Black powder simply requires to be set on fire; while a smokeless powder, on the contrary, not only requires that it be set on fire, but that a certain degree of pressure be set up inside of the cartridge case. For instance, if a primer of a certain size should be found to operate perfectly well, giving prompt ignition in the cartridge case of a rifle of small caliber, it would be found that the same primer would not ignite a charge of the same powder if loaded into a gun of one inch caliber. In the latter case a few grains only lying near the primer would be ignited, and these would soon become extinguished by sudden release of pressure bringing about a cooling effect due to expansion of the gases. In small cartridges a large fulminating cap is all that is required, but in large cartridges it is necessary to resort to additional means of ignition.