In regard to the ammunition. The cordite charges in their brass cylinders and zinc-lined boxes did admirably, and the amount of knocking about which the cases and boxes out here stand is marvellous. At one time early in the campaign before Colenso and Ladysmith, a decided variation in shooting of our guns was noticed, and was put down in many cases to the variation of the cordite itself, the brass cases sometimes lying out, in fact, in a powerful sun for hours, while the guns were waiting or in action, and often becoming then too hot to touch. Now, however, I personally don't think that this theory was right but am of opinion that the variation then noticed, and even after in the shooting, was simply due to the varying recoil of guns on different slopes of ground and with indifferent drag-shoes. Royal Artillery officers confirm one in this opinion. As for the shells, both common and shrapnel, they stood the knocking about well, and I never saw or heard of a single common shell used with 12-pounders not exploding on striking, which speaks well for the base fuse. The shrapnel I am not quite so sure about; one noticed often a great deal of damp collected in the threads of the fuse plug and nose of the shell; owing, I presume, to condensation in their shell boxes under the change of heat and cold. Still they did very well and I think seldom failed to burst when set the right distance. I say the right distance because this at first was a slight puzzle to us, the subject of height in feet above the sea-level of course never having before presented itself to us as altering very considerably the setting of the time fuse; and I don't think that a table of correction for this exists in the Naval Service; at any rate, I have never seen one. To illustrate this, we found at Spion Kop (about 3,500 feet above the sea-level) that it was necessary to set the time fuse for any given range some 500 yards short to get the shell to burst at all before striking; and on the top of Van Wyk, fronting Botha's Pass (some 6,500 feet above sea-level) I had to allow the fuse 800 to 900 yards short of the range, and similarly at Almond's Nek. This is, I take it, due to the projectile travelling further against a reduced air pressure at any height than it does for the same sighting of the gun at sea-level, for which of course all guns are sighted. I should like to talk to experts regarding this as we are not quite sure about it up here.[6] [Footnote 6: I am since glad to hear from Lieutenant Henderson of H.M.S. _Excellent_, that he is engaged in working out a table of corrections, such as I mention, and is also interesting himself in the question of "range-finders," and "filters," and other necessities for naval service.]