to it by the large charge of powder used; from its great windage it loaded easily; and, although rather too heavy for long marches, it was strong enough to bear any amount of hard usage.[120] So long as the rifle used a spherical ball it could not claim to rival Brown Bess for general service. As soon as the elongated projectile was developed the supersession of the smooth-bore was a matter of time alone. It is strange, however, in view of the enthusiasm of the Victorian rifleman and the ease with which the fire-arm lent itself to novel experiments, that the evolution of the elongated projectile covered so long a period as it did. Apart from the fact that cylindrical bars and shot had often been fired from ordnance, it was known that Benjamin Robins himself had tried the experiment of firing egg-shaped projectiles from a rifle with a certain amount of success. The inefficiency of the loose sphere, in the case of the smooth-bore, and of the tightly rammed sphere, in the case of the rifle, were both recognized in the early days of the century. And, while no solution could be found, the problem was generally agreed to be: how to drop the projectile loosely down the barrel, and tighten it so as to absorb the windage when already there. Two or three English inventors made proposals. In 1823 a Captain Norton, of the 34th Regiment, submitted an elongated projectile with a base hollowed out in such a way as to expand automatically when the pressure of the powder-gas came on it, and thus seal the bore. The idea came to him from an examination of the arrow used by the natives of Southern India with their blow-tube: an examination which revealed that the base of the arrow was formed of elastic lotus-pith, which by its expansion against the cylindrical surface of the tube prevented the escape of air past it. In 1836 Mr. Greener submitted a pointed bullet having a cylindrical cavity in its base in which a conical plug was fixed, expanding the base by a wedging action when under the pressure of the powder gases.[121] Had either of these ideas been considered with the attention which it deserved, the development of the rifle in this country might have been more rapid than it was. “By blindly rejecting both of these inventions the authorities deprived England of the honour of having initiated the greatest improvement in small arms.” It was in France that the elongated projectile waged an eventually successful struggle against the spherical ball, its ancient rival. The French, troubled by the superiority of their Arab enemies in shooting at long range, founded a School of Musketry at Vincennes. In 1828 Captain Delvigne, a distinguished staff officer of that school, established the two main principles on which all succeeding inventors were obliged to rely: one, that in muzzle-loading rifles the projectile must slip down the barrel with a certain windage, so as to admit of easy loading; two, that only elongated projectiles were suited to modern rifles.