The prizes were given away by the Marchioness of Bath, and the opportunity was taken advantage of to hold a battalion drill, but it was rather a failure--very few attended. The officers afterwards messed together at the "Bath Arms," and a plan was hastily sketched out for a camp to be held for the whole battalion in the coming year, it becoming only too evident that these spasmodic battalion drills were useless, and that each corps would be better for a continuous and systematic course of drilling and discipline, either at Aldershot or in a regimental camp. The usual annual prize-meeting between the officers of both battalions, to compete for a challenge cup of large value, and a very beautiful silver claret jug, to be retained by the winner, came off at Chippenham, and was won by an officer of the 1st Battalion. These valuable and most desirable prizes were given each year by Mr. Poynder, whose liberality in supporting the Rifle Corps and rifle movement generally was unbounded. Perhaps the terms on which this officers' prize was to be shot for did not encourage good shooting, or prove that the winner of a silver claret jug was in reality a terrible man at the targets. Each year saw the challenge cup held by a new officer, who was somewhat heavily handicapped for the next year's competition: so much so, indeed, as to render his chance, or the chances of his predecessors, in the prize holding from repeating themselves almost impossible. Under these circumstances, it appeared but a calculation of time as to how long it might be before each competing officer in the two battalions possessed an embossed silver claret jug. These massive or fragile pieces of plate being offered as prizes for excellence in shooting, to the volunteers, were a mistake. To many of the men money prizes would have been much more acceptable, as these cups, mugs, salvers, &c., were of small advantage to any but the silversmiths, who, seizing the occasion for emptying their shops of all the ill-shaped rubbish accumulated by time, charged the donors a price far beyond the real value of the article. Experience has made all wiser, and old pint pots, and drinking cups, almost transparent in their absence of metal, have been relegated to the melting-pot. The year 1867 was a marked epoch in the history of this battalion. It was a year of preparation for more systematic arrangements generally, and for drawing tighter the cords of discipline and unity. It was very desirable that the two battalions should form regimental camps, and by these means ensure a knowledge of combined movements being more general throughout the battalions; but proposals fell to the ground, and the oft-repeated hasty assembling, and more hasty departure of portions of corps for train-catching, were continued for yet another year.