The Press.
London, England, 1858-01-23 00:00:00

Baba! anb Alilung 3ntellignut.

THE following circular has been issued from the
Recruiting Department :

Horse Guards, Jan. 18.
The standard of recruits for all regimenta of infantry
serving in India is reduced to five feet three inches until
further orders, the age remaining as at present—viz., from
eighteen to thirty years.
By command of his Royal Highness the General Com-

G. A. WITHZRLLL,

VICE-ADMIRAL SIR JOHN CoonE, K.C.8., died at
his residence in Plymouth on Tuesday night. He was
on the reserve list of the 25th of June, 1857, and in
receipt of service pension.
THE good-service pension rendered vacant by the
death of Admiral Downman has been given to Vice-
Admiral A. R. Sharpe.

FORTIFICATLONS OF THE PORT OF PLYMOUTH.—
Major Jarvis, R.E., Assistant Inspector-General of
Fortifications, is at present at Plymouth, on special
duty, to make arrangements with the Earl of Mount
Edgcumbe and W. Pole Carew, Esq.,, for the pur-
chase of portions of their land, for the purpose of
constructing a chain of fortifications on the western
side of Hamoaze.

ROYAL VISIT TO WOOLWICH ARSENAL.
Ox Thursday the Prince Consort and the Royal
Princes now on a visit to the Queen paid a
visit to Woolwich, inspected the various de-
partments of the Royal Arsenal, and attended
a parade of the garrison. The Royal party, con-
sisting of his Royal Highness the Prince
Consort, the Prince of Wales, Prince Alfred, the
Prince of Prussia, the Princes Albert, Frederick
Charles, Frederick Albert, and Adalbert of Prussia,
his Highness the Prince, of Hohenzollern, and their
Royal Highnesses Prince William of Baden and the
Duke of Saxe Coburg, attended by their respective
suites, arrived at the Arsenal shortly after 11 a.m.
The Royal party inspected in detail the brass foundry,
where two 12-pounder howitzers were cast in their
presence, the smithy and the laboratory, where are
machines for making the Minie bullets, and which
process seemed to excite the interest of the Royal
visitors. Like all the machines here, these are per-

featly automatic. Coils of solid leaden piping are
hung in it, which it unwinds, etas to the required
length, stamps with steel dies into the form of g
Minis bullet, and then conveys away into box"
Each machine has four dies, which out, stamp, anti
pass into boxes thirty-six bullets a minute, giving for
each machine an average of 7,000 per hour. There
are four of such machines, which thus each day turn
out 300,000 Minis bullets; but, of course, as they
never tire, the number produced can at any time be
doubled by leaving them to work all night. 'l'h7
are so simple in their construction that one man
could easily attend to them all. It was a curious
contrast to the silent rapidity with which these
deadly messengers were formed to watch a number
of men and boys working near them casting round
musket-balls for Shrapnel shells in the old style of
hand work. By this method two persons can only
rough cast seven cwt. of bullets per day, or about
12,500, which it takes two persons another day to
trim. From the laboratory they inspected the wheel
factory. Here a few unskilled labourers superin
tending the machines produce forty complete gun.
carriage wheels a day, though all their component
parts are made of the hardest woods—viz., elm for
the naves, oak spokes, and ash for the felloes. The
novelty here was the new mode in which a wheel is
fitted together. Instead of by hand, as formerly, the
pieces are all laid together on the ground, aril of
course in a circle, around the outside of which are
six small hydraulic rams, with the head of the piston
of each curved so as to form a segment of a circle
touching the outside portion of the wheel. One small
steam engine pumps the water into all these with au
equal pressure, which, as it increases, forces the
felloes into the spokes, and the spokes into the nave
of the wheel with such f Tee as to compress the whole
by a strain of 250 tons into the solidity of one piece.
The Prince of Prussia especially seemed much
interested by this process and the extraordinary
rapidity and con,pleteness with which it was effected.
After examining it most minutely he requested that
another wheel might be fixed in the machine, which
was of course instantly done, and the process
repeated. The actual time occupied in pressing the
wheel firmly together by this way is rather less than
halt a minute. From this workshop, after glancing
at the endless handsaws, the Royal party proceeded
through the saddlery and the iron gun turnery into
the new great toundery for iron guns, where the
principle of the peculiar bore of a small, but beau-
tifully finished, rifled cannon of Mr. Whitworth's
was explained. This weapon evidently gave rise to
much conversation as to rifled cannon among the
Royal party, and several others of an older pattern
were afterwards examined while proceeding towards
the test-house for bars of iron and steel. Here a bar
of iron an inch in diameter was broken with a tension
strain of 31,0001 b., or about thirteen tons, and the
strength, value, and relative merits of the machine
with which this was done were afterwards explained
to and canvassed by the visitors.

The Royal party after this at once proceeded to
the gun wharf, where some thirty or forty horses
were provided for all the visitors, and precisely at
one o'clock the cortege quitted the Arsenal. After
leaving the Arsenal the Royal visitors at once
proceeded to the Artillery barracks, where they par-
took of luncheon, and came upon the review ground
in the centre of the common after a lapse of about
half an hour.

The inspection of the troops was very brief, the
whole affair not exceeding forty minutes, when the
Royal party returned to town.

Sate ad Valitt.

THE Judges have agreed to a general holiday g
the Law Courts on Monday next, in consideration of
that day being the auspicious day of the marriage of
her Royal Highness the Princess Royal with Prince
Frederick William of Prussia. _ .

A RETIRING PENSION of 2,0001. a year has been
granted to Sir John Dodson.
THE QUESTION OF THE DISALLOWANCE OF FEES TO
CORONERS is under the consideration of the Middle-
sex. magistrates. A special court was held at the
Sessions House, Clerkenwell, on Thursday, for the
purpose of bearing counsel on the point. Mr. Bodkin
argued for the coroners.
AMONGST the batch of counsel who bare just
received silk, and on Mondey last took their seat
within the bar, appears the name of Mr. Goldsmid.
He is a son of the Baron Goldsmid, and is the first
member of the Hebrew persuasion who has yet
attained that dignity.
THE CASE OF COLONEL WAUGH AND THE EASTERN
BANE again came before the Court of Bsnkruptcy on
Tuesday, when Mr. Commissioner Evans, upon the
representation of Mr. Linklater, ordered a memo•
randum to be placed on the proceedings that the
bankrupt had not surrendered to the adjudication.
This proceeding is a virtual
proclamation of
outlawry.