After looking at the guns we naturally go on to look at the targets at which they are fired. Targets at _The New Range_ are not so much marks as specimens of armour-plates and other protections. Some of these are built up with a strength which to the uninitiated appears to be proof against any attack. Here, for instance, we find a steel plate of eighteen inches in thickness, and behind this six inches of iron, the whole backed up by huge balks of timber. But notwithstanding its depth, the enormous mass has been dented and cracked, and in places pierced. When we look at plates which are not quite so thick, we see that the shells have formed what are pretty and regular patterns, for small triangles of metal have been splintered off and turned back, so that the aperture is decorated with a circle of leaves, and resembles a rose with the centre cut out. Where the shell has entered the plate before it bursts, the pattern remains very perfect; but when it explodes as it touches the surface, some of the encircling leaves are entirely cut off. One target is pointed out to us which represents the iron casing of the vulnerable portions of a torpedo boat, consisting of engine-room, boilers, and coal-bunkers. These compartments have been riddled again and again. Even a service-rifle bullet can penetrate one side, and a shell of the smallest size will go through both, for torpedo boats are not very heavily built. HIRAM S. MAXIM AND THE MAXIM MACHINE GUN. Statisticians inform us that the entire loss of life in wars between so-called civilised countries from the year 1793 down to 1877 had reached the enormous amount of four million four hundred and seventy thousand. To many persons these figures convey a sad and salutary lesson. But, leaving the sentimental part of the subject aside, all will readily unite in admiring the wonderful mechanism which makes the Maxim Machine Gun an engine of terrible destructiveness. Stanley provided himself with this formidable weapon, to be used defensively in the expedition on which he started for the relief of Emin Bey. It obtained a gold medal at the Inventions Exhibition, and has been approved of, if not actually adopted, by many governments. [Illustration: Rifle-calibre Maxim Gun.]