A new projectile has lately come out, the invention of Captain Edward
Palliser, of the British army. This bullet consists of a jacket made of
very soft Swedish wrought iron, coated with zinc and filled with lead,
the lead being pressed into this jacket. The bullet is corrugated at its
base, after the manner of the one made by Colonel Buffington. This
projectile has been experimented with very extensively by the British
government, and at the works of the Maxim-Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition
Company, in England. The zinc coating of the bullet is too soft to stick
to the barrel of the gun, and also in a measure acts as a lubricant.
This projectile has given better results than any other that has been
experimented with. The great velocities and the most uniform pressures
by the use of smokeless powder have been attained with this Palliser
bullet.


NOISELESSNESS.

A great many stories have been told about the noiselessness of smokeless
powder. But there is no such thing as a noiseless gunpowder. The report
of a gun charged with smokeless powder is very sharp, and is as loud as
when black powder is used, yet the volume of sound is much less, so that
the report cannot be heard at so great a distance.

The report of a gun using smokeless powder is a sound of much higher
pitch than when black powder is used, and consequently cannot be heard
at so great a distance as the lower notes given by black powder.

As smokeless powder exerts a much greater pressure than common black
powder when burned in a gun, one would naturally think that the recoil
of the barrel would be greater, owing to the greater pressure exerted by