Captain Chads, C.B., of the Excellent, at Portsmouth, recently per-
formed a series of experiments which proved satisfactorily that shot could be made to take a considerable diverging course instead of going in a clireet line to the object they were directed against, and that the result could be attained with great certainty by very simple means.
"The experiments,' says the Morning Post, were made with 82-pound- er and 68-pounder solid shot; the shot bein_g prepared for the purpose by having a hole bored on one side of about an inch and a half in diameter, which is afterwards filled with a plug made of wood. The extraction of the metal from one side of the shot alters.the centre of gravity and the direc- tion of the shot when -fired, according as the wooden plugged side is placed upwards or downwards, or to the right or left, when loadingthe gun. The result of the experiments with 32-pounder shot, plugged as de- scribed, showed that, with the usual service charge of gunpowder, 10. pounds, with the plug placed to the right of the gun, and the piece of ord- nance directed against a target in the usual way, the shot-when fired diverged to the extent of fifty yards to the right of the target; and when the plug was placed to the left side of the gun„. the divergence when fired was Ifty yards to the left of the target. On placing the plugged side of the shot down- wards in the gun, the shot when -fired fell 400 yards short of the target, and when the plugged side of the shot was placed upwards in the gun the shot when fired ranged 400 yards beyond the target Nearly the same result was obtained in a number of experiments. The experiments with the 68- pounder shot, bored and plugged in a similar manner, gave more extraordi- nary results, as the plug when placed downwards in the gun fell 600 yards short of the object aimed ; and when the ping Was placed upwards in the gun, it went 600 yards beyond it. When the plug was placed to the right it diverged between 60 and 70 yards before it reached the distance of the tar- get, and the same distance to the left when the plug was placed to the left. Several members of the Select Committee left Woolwich yesterday morning for Shoeburyness, to carry on experiments at that range with the shot pre- pared in the same manner as the experiments were made with at Portsmouth. Thirty-aix of the 32-pounder shot to be fired at Shoeburynees have holes made on one side l inch in diameter, and to such depth as would withdraw one pound weight of the metal of the shot. Thirty-six shot have been pre-- pared by boring holes 2 inches in diameter and extracJiug two pounds of metal from each, and a number of 63-pounders have been prepared by boring holes 2i inches in diameter and extracting four pounds of metal."
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