The Lee-Enfield has five grooves (Lee-Metford ten), making one complete turn from right to left in every ten inches. It weighs 9 lb. 4 oz., and the barrel is 30.197 inches long. The range averages 3500 yards.
We are now falling into line with other powers by adopting the “clip” form instead of the box for loading. The sealed pattern of the new service weapon is thus provided, and has also been made somewhat lighter and shorter while preserving the same velocity.
We are promised an even more rapid firing rifle than any of these, one in which the recoil is used to work the breech and lock so that it is a veritable automatic gun. Indeed, several continental nations have made trial of such weapons and reported favourably upon them. One lately tried in Italy works by means of gas generated by the explosion passing through a small hole to move a piston-rod. It is claimed that the magazine can hold as many as fifty cartridges and fire up to thirty rounds a minute; but the barrel became so hot after doing this that the trial had to be stopped.
The principal result of automatic action would probably be excessive waste of cartridges by wild firing in the excitement of an engagement. It is to-day as true as formerly that it takes on the average a man’s weight of lead to kill him in battle.
To our neighbours across the Channel the credit also belongs of introducing smokeless powder, now universally used; that of the Lee-Metford being “cordite.” To prevent the bullets flattening on impact they are coated with a hard metal such as nickel and its alloys. If the nose is soft, or split beforehand, a terribly enlarged and lacerated wound is produced; so the Geneva Convention humanely prohibited the use of such missiles in warfare.
Before quitting this part of our subject it is as well to add a few words about pistols.
These have passed through much the same process of evolution as the rifle, and have now culminated in the many-shotted revolver.
During the period 1480-1500 the match-lock revolver is said to have been brought into use; and one attributed to this date may be seen in the Tower of London.
Two hundred years ago, Richards, a London gunsmith, converted the ancient wheel-lock into the flint-lock; he also rifled his barrel and loaded it at the breech. The Richards weapon was double-barrelled, and unscrewed for loading at the point where the powder-chamber ended; the ball was placed in this chamber in close contact with the powder, and the barrel rescrewed. The bullet being a soft leaden ball, was forced, when the charge was fired, through the rifled barrel with great accuracy of aim.
The percussion cap did not oust the flint-lock till less than a century ago, when many single-barrelled pistols, such as the famous Derringer, were produced; these in their turn were replaced by the revolver which Colt introduced in 1836-1850. Smith and Wesson in the early sixties improved upon it by a device for extracting the empty cartridges automatically. Livermore and Russell of the United States invented the “clip,” containing several cartridges; but the equally well-known Winchester has its cartridges arranged in a tube below the barrel, whence a helical spring feeds them to the breech as fast as they are needed.