After enumerating all the weapons used by the belligerents, it would be an unpardonable omission to say nothing of the famous dum-dum bullets.
Have they been much used? Yes, certainly, and on both sides.
The story that the Boers only used those they had captured from the English is quite inadmissible, for the Mauser rifles, which were used exclusively in the Transvaal, were largely provided with them.
I will try to describe the patterns chiefly used:
1. Section in the nickel casing, leaving the extremity of the leaden bullet exposed; the lead, getting very hot, emerges partly from the casing, flattens at the slightest resistance, and expands.
2. Four longitudinal sections in the nickel casing allow the bullet to flatten at the moment of contact, and to exude lead through the apertures.
These two first patterns, the ones most in use, are made for Lee-Metford and Mauser rifles.
The English also use hollow-nosed bullets, the extremity of which is cut or rubbed off.
The Boers, for their part, have manufactured solid projectiles, which show the lead through a straight section, and have the four longitudinal slits.
A few expansive Lee-Metford cartridges, hollow, and filled with fulminate, certainly existed, but I do not believe that they were ever in general use.