The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-11-13
RIFLES AND BULLETS

that the target sights as q rule are further apart and adapted to the back position. the modern high power rifle seems to shoot so much better from the prone position as to more than com pensate for any sight advanage the target sights might thus gain over our military sight, A glance over the re- cords of those long range matches VIII show that in ninety per cent or the matches the Krag has come out vic- torious. Indeed. the remarkanie oeve- lopment of accuracy in the American high power rifle within the past few years has not been due to any particu- lar refinement in the weapon or sights. but solely to the improvement in the bullet and in the more uniform meas uring of powder charges
 To deal understandingly with the diff ferences that have taken place in rifles since the adoption of the high power principle, it will be necessary. to look . little into the principles governing all rifles. A rifle may be regarded as an implement embodying all the re- sources of science and art in the ef- fort to throw a projectile far, swift ly and accurately. The projectile is &C., ted upon by the natural forces pre- cisely as is stone when thrown from the hand, the difference. due to the higher velocity of the bullet. being in degree and not in kind. The mystery
 that In the minds of the uninitiated Is supposed to attend the flight of a bul- let Is chiefly due to the fact that-the bullet cannot under ordinary circum- stance be observed in its flight and its motion watched. like the stone.
 The first thing that may be taken as true of all projectiles, no matter how thrown. is that they fall toward the earth as soon as the support Is removed from them. just the same as though they were not projectiles. But even while they, are falling. the ener- gy applied is driving them ahead. From. however, powerful. can drive a bullet so fast that it will go in a straight line it immediately begins to fall, as soon as it leaves the barrel, unless the latter has been directed upward to some extent; in which case. besides it's forward motion. it will rise until the upward force also imparted to it has been expended. and then begin to fall according to the weilkown law of ter the further 1t falls. The flight of a bullet, therefore. Is always in a cur we'd line.
 It does not seem as though air would offer much resistance to the passage of a body through it, but any one who has ridden a bicycle knows that it does. moreover, the resistance of the air increases much more than approximately with the speed of the moving body, for if the speed be doub- led, the resistance will be more than duadrupled. The air, therefore, be- comes a much more potent factor in retarding the progress of a bullet than of the stone thrown from the hand. even though, weight for weight, the bullet presents less sectional area. The forward motion of the projectils, there- fore, will become slower the further it travels, while it's falling speed is continually increasing owing to the laws of gravity; and for this reason the further it goes, the more curved will be its flight, until at last 1t drops to the ground.
 It is evident that the greater weight bullet has in proportion to It's sec- tional area, the less will be the degree of the resistance opposed to 1t by the air, other things being equal. An athlete could not throw a cork as far as a boy could piece of lead of the same size and shape. Therefore the heaviest available material-lead-is
 used in the manufacture of the rifle
 bullets. For the same reason, the
 modern long bullet maintains It's
 velocity much better than the old round bullet used in the musket and early muzzle loading rife.
 But when a bullet is made longer than its diameter. some means must be taken to insure its flying in the direc- tion of tis long axis-point on. This Is the object of the spiral grooves that are cut on the inside of a rifle barrel for 1t is found that If the bullet be caused to rotate with sufficient rapidity on its long axis. it will not turn side ways during it's flight. The degree of this twist in the rifiing Is called It's
 pitch" The longer the bullet in pro- portion to its diameter. the quicker the pitch of the rifing must be; if the bull | let is too long for a given pitch of rifiing to handle. this will be shown by the bullet going through the target | in a sideways or tipping position-in the parlance of the rifeman. 1t key
 holes" It is necessary for the bullet | to be kept point on from consideration