[115] Quoted in _The Book of the Rifle_ from Schmidt’s _Armes à Feu Portatives_, 1889. [116] Delvigne: _Notice historique des armes rayées_. [117] Beaufoy: _Scloppetaria_. [118] A paragraph in Beaufoy’s _Scloppetaria_ (1808) shows the complete misconception under which its author laboured as to the function of rifling. Just as the air turns a windmill or a shuttlecock (he says), so, after an indented ball quits its rifled barrel the air, forced spirally along its grooves, will cause the ball to turn. In short, he regarded the spiral grooves of a barrel as being of no further utility, with respect to the generating of the rotary motion, than as an easy way of giving the ball the requisite indentations. [119] Fremantle: _The Book of the Rifle_. [120] Captain A. Walker: _The Rifle_, 1864. [121] At the beginning of the century Ezekiel Baker had noted that “a wadding in the shape of an acorn cup placed on the powder, and the ball put on the top of the cup, will expand the cup and fill the bore--and of course the windage will be much diminished.” [122] Mention must be made of an important prior development of the elongated bullet which had been carried out by General Jacob in India, quite independently of French research. General Jacob conducted, in an altogether scientific manner, experiments the successful results of which were communicated by him to the home government on more than one occasion. The importance of his discoveries remained unrecognized, and the value of his improvements was lost to this country. [123] In military circles the possibilities of the invasion of this country had for some time been under discussion, in view of the increasingly aggressive temper of the French. Interest in national defence became general with the warning letter of the Duke of Wellington which appeared in _The Times_ on the 9th January, 1847. In ’51 was held the Great Exhibition, and for a time opinion was less agitated. The Exhibition, it was thought and hoped by numbers of people, would inaugurate the millennium. [124] This advantage of the rifled gun hod been fully appreciated by Captain Norton. As early as 1832 he had conducted trials with one-pounder rifled cannon, to confirm his belief that the projectile would maintain its rotation during flight and hit the target point-first (_Journal of R.U.S.I._, 1837). [125] Commander R. A. E. Scott, R.N.: _Journal of R.U.S.I._, Vol. VI, 1862. [126] Tennant: _The Story of the Guns_. This book gives in detail the controversy which arose between the advocates of the Armstrong and the Whitworth systems. [127] _Edinburgh Review_, 1859. Quoted by Sir E. Tennant.