Breech-Loading Firearms

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The Board of Ordnance officers, consisting of Col. Ripley, Major Ramsay, and Captain Maynadief appointed by the Secretary of War to examine and test all breech-loading firearms that might be presented to them, with a view of adopting a model for the alteration of the old arm to breech-loading, have submitted to the Department a report of their experiments lately made at West Point in obedience to instructions. From reports received from outside spectators at the trials, which are embraced in the statement published on page 390 of the present volume of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, we were inclined to believe that Mt. Storm would have been the successful competitor, but in this we were mistaken, as will be seen by the following concluding paragraph of the report, wiieh embodies the practical result of the labors of the Board :— "The Board select Morse's model, inasmuch as it differs from the others by including the new and untried principle of a primed metallic cartridge, which may, on actual trial, be found of advantage; and they recommend that the appropriation, or so much of it as the Secretary of War may deem necessary for the purposes of trial by troops in service, be applied to the alteration of old United States arms upon Morse's model, with certain modifications suggested by him." The other Ordnance Board recently assembled at West Point, under that part of the same act which makes an appropriation " for the purchase of breech-loading carbines of the best model to be selected and proved by a board of Ordnance officers," have not yet made their report.

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