Corresponding with their grades the sergeants and staff-sergeants have finer cloth and wear royal gold cord on those parts where the rank and file display yellow worsted cord only. Rank is shown by chevrons of gold lace worn above the elbow, but the badges to denote the staff-sergeants occur just above the sleeve knot with the points upward. Lance-corporals have one stripe on the right arm; other ranks have the marks on both arms. Second corporals one on each arm; corporals two; sergeants three and an embroidered crown; colour-sergeants an equal number of chevrons surmounted by an open banner and based by a couple of crossed swords; and the staff-sergeants four badges of broader lace and an embroidered crown. The last, in addition, have facings of garter blue silk velvet, shoulder knots of treble twisted gold cord with blue eyes bearing silver embroidered grenades; sleeve knots traced in and out with Russia gold braid and the skirts lined with white kerseymere. The bugle-major’s rank, in addition to the chevrons and crown, is indicated by a musical device with banners, which must have puzzled the professors of embroidery to make it sufficiently characteristic, elaborated with cross trumpets, rams’ horns, tambourines, and other insignia, around a lyre and grenade.
The artificers of the driver troop—farriers, shoeing smiths, wheelers, and collar-makers—are distinguished by the usual devices, worn above the elbow.
The buglers wear worsted embroidered cross trumpets on both arms, and the good conduct men are distinguished by badges of narrow gold lace on the right arm just above the knot.
No better colour for trowsers than dark Oxford mixture cloth could be introduced. They have therefore been retained, as also the red stripes down the outer seams. The working trowsers are of the same colour, and similarly striped, but a few shades coarser in texture. The driver troop wear strapped trowsers of the regimental quality, of which each man receives two pairs annually.
In the midst of a variety of conflicting ideas as to what constitutes the best head-dress, the uncomfortable chaco still holds its unsightly place as a component of sapper uniform. Top-heavy for the drivers in riding, the chaco forms no part of their uniform, and so the forage-cap is made to do double duty.
The fatigue jacket is of red cloth. Loose and suitable for working it descends as low as the hips, but is militarized by blue cloth pointed cuffs, single twisted shoulder-cords of yellow worsted, and a blue cloth rounded collar. As before, the buttons are small and convex, bearing the garter device, and worn about an inch apart, evincing less coxcombry than in the defunct days of close buttons. All the non-commissioned officers wear gold chevrons and gold single twisted shoulder-cords.
Scarlet jackets, after the fashion of the fatigue ones, are worn by all ranks on drill parades and in walking. In addition to their chevrons the sergeants and colour-sergeants wear embroidered crowns, the latter rank being distinguished from the former by a fourth chevron. Besides the plain single-breasted blue surtout, modernized with a rounded collar, the staff-sergeants appear, on parade occasions, in scarlet jackets with the badge of their rank, gold studs down the front, and dark blue silk velvet cuffs and collar, both trimmed with Russia gold braid, and finished with what the tailors, in the poetry of their trade, term crowsfeet. There are no buttons on the jacket, except two on each cuff and two to sustain the double shoulder-cord. The fronts are closed by hooks and eyes.
The cloth forage-cap—a delicate institution of peaceable times—was set aside by the adoption of a small Kilmarnock bonnet and chin-strap, well suited for the rough usages of war. Worn with a dragoonish air in the day, it offers itself as a substitute for a pillow at night without the fear of spoiling its shape. It is of dark blue wool banded with a yellow stripe manufactured in the web and decorated with a brass boss in the centre of the crown. The buglers wear the distinction of a pair of crossed trumpets on the front of the cap, while the sergeants and staff-sergeants have small dark-blue cloth caps with large projecting peaks, trimmed with scarlet piping and gold lace bands. The crown of the cap, à la cavalry, is formed of eight pieces—a curious fancy—radiating from the centre and covered at the point of union with a gold netted convex boss. The band of the staff-sergeants is wider and richer than that of the sergeants.
That important article of dress, “the ammunition boot,” has been much improved in these late days. Before railways were invented the laced-up boot was a favourite among soldiers, particularly those who could boast of having performed long marches in the Peninsula and France; but when travelling by rail began to be the fashion of the service, it was discovered that the laced-up boot was not only odious in regimentals and uncomfortable, but not water-tight. So by degrees the Blucher boot was introduced in the army, and the sappers, the last troops, perhaps, to adopt it, received Bluchers this year for the first time. The troop of drivers wear half Wellingtons.
The carbine introduced in 1843 being discarded, the Lancaster percussion-musket was given to the corps late in the year. Bored elliptically without groove, and carrying an elongated bullet, its range exceeds 1,000 yards: that of the carbine, even in extravagant instances of flight, scarcely ever struck a mark at 300 yards and was uncertain at 200. After a few rounds had been fired it was inefficient, and impromptu expedients had to be resorted to, when the bore fouled with the powder, to ram the cartridge home. Many a man broke the ranks to find a brickbat or other rude assistance to hammer the ramrod into the barrel. These primitive severities are now at an end. The bayonet can be used in the double capacity of a sword or bayonet. With a hilt partly of black skin cross-pressed, and partly brass, with a transverse brass bar guard, it is fixed to the musket by a suture and spring. The blade, about two feet long, has a rounded back and runs on with a spine to the point, from whence a return stretches with a slight swell up its back, and then loses itself in the spine about ten inches from the tip. Thus the sword for a certain distance is two-edged, and when fixed, the length of the musket, prepared for a charge, is shorter by one inch than the abandoned carbine and sword bayonet.