THE MITEAILLEUE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 143, 3 November 1870, Page 7

THE MITEAILLEUE.

The "Times" in describing the mitrailleur says :—": — " Experiments have been made with it in almost every European country, and two English reports upon it in its Belgian form exist written by Major George V. Fosbery, V.C., one of them dated the 2d of September 1868. It is true that the French weapon has been developed since the Emperor took it into his own hands, but the changes are trifling, and are in the ammunition more than in the piece itself. The mitrailleur " Christophe et Montigny" is quite close enough an example of the French engine to explain the principle, and the experiments made with it at Brussels in August 1868 need only to be improved a little to represent its probable effects in the hands of the French army. The French engine shoots straighter, stronger, and farther

than the Belgian 1888. Otherwise the virtues and defects of the one are the virtues and defects of the other. Major Fosbery, who appears to have adopted and improved it as well as to be an earnest advocate of its powers, calls it by its masculine title. The general principle is easily explained. The reader must imagine a manybarrelled gun, thirty-seven barrels all laid together like a fagot of sticks, and soldered fast in that position. They are open at both ends, and behind is a wrought-iron farmework to support the breechloading apparatus. A breech block containing a separate spiral spring and steel-piston for each, barrel slides backwards and forwards behind the barrels worked by a lever. When the breech block is drawn back there is space suflicient between it and the barrels to slip down vertically a plate pierced with holes containing cartridges, one for each barrel. Then the breech lock is pressed forward by means of the lever, and this action both closes fast the back of all the barrels, and compresses the spiral springs, so that they are .ready to thrust their pistons forward suddenly against their corresponding cartridges,

and so ignite them but for a certain hindrance. This hindrance is a thin steel plate in front of the pistons, but it i-; movable out of the waj by the action of a handle. As the handle is turned fust or slow, the plate slices out of the way quickly or slowly in proportion, and permits one piston after another to strike and discharge its cartridge at intervals of any duration, or, by a rapid turning of the handle, all the pistons to strike their cartridges so rapidly that the 37 barrels are disharged almost simultaneously —as nearly so as the rifles of a company of infantry ordered to fire a volley. The barrels being practically parrallel, the bullets fly pretty closely, and great destruction must occur if the piece be only laid properly on the object. As ten platesful of cartridges, or 370 bullets, can be discharged in one minute, it is evident that nothing could pass a bridge, a doorway, a narrow path, the ditch of a fortress, guarded by mitrailleurs well served and protected. The machine can be easily worked by two men, possibly even by one. But it is too heavy to be conveyed otherwise than on a small carriage, and a carriage involves horses. It is not supposed that it can meet and master a field-gun. It occupies a place between field artillery and infantry, and yet we can well conceive of cases where mitrailleurs may even have the advantage over field-guns."