Whatever devices were adopted to prevent stripping, however perfect the design and material of the equipment employed, two factors stood in the way of any further advance in the evolution of the rifle firing the spherical ball. First, the unsuitability of the sphere itself for projection through a resisting medium, by reason of the large surface which it offered to the air’s resistance and the relatively small mass by means of which it could maintain its flight. Second, the gyroscopic action of the spinning sphere, which limited its effective range in a manner which was probably unrealized until after it had been completely superseded. The sphere, unlike the elongated bullet, which always keeps its axis approximately tangential to its trajectory, maintained throughout flight its spin on its original axis. This did not matter much when ranges were short and trajectories flat; but as greater ranges and loftier trajectories came into use the effect on accuracy of aim became very important. During its descent through the latter part of the trajectory the rifle ball rotated in a plane no longer normal to its direction of flight; “it tended more and more to roll upon the air, and deviated considerably.”[119] § The old Brown Bess, the ¾-inch smooth-bore musket which our armies carried at Waterloo, in the Peninsula, and even at the Crimea, differed in no great respect from the muskets borne by British troops at Ramillies, whose inefficiency was such that it was seriously questioned whether, without the invention of the bayonet, they would have permanently superseded the crossbow of the Middle Ages. The inefficiency of Brown Bess was indeed remarkable. Its standard of accuracy was so low that a trained marksman could only depend on putting one shot in twenty into an eighteen-foot square target at two hundred yards, at which range it was supposed to be effective. Its windage was so great that bullets flew wild from the muzzle; and it is not very surprising that, armed with such a weapon, our infantry should often have been impelled “to resort to the strong and certain thrust of the bayonet, rather than rely for their safety on the chance performances of the clumsy and capricious Brown Bess.” Writers on fire-arms are able to give dozens of tragic and laughable instances of its erratic shooting. In the Kaffir war, for example, our troops had to expend no fewer than eighty thousand rounds to kill or cripple some twenty-five naked savages. After Waterloo a musket was sent down to Woolwich, to ascertain whether its ball would penetrate a French cuirass at two hundred yards’ range. The cuirass was mounted on a pole, the musket aligned and held firmly in a vice; but it was found impossible to secure a hit until, at last, a random shot fired by one of the officers present did take effect! Nevertheless, Brown Bess remained in favour for a number of years after Waterloo. It had a flat and raking trajectory, owing to the very high muzzle velocity imparted