CHAPTER IX

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF AMMUNITION

To those who are not professional gunners, Artillery ammunition may seem at the first glance to be a hopeless and chaotic jumble of endless stores. This is no doubt partly owing to the necessary multiplicity of the stores, but far more to the absence (in most books and lists) of any synoptic digest, or plan, showing at one view the classification of the whole and the pedigree of each article. To remedy this want the following table has been drawn out, showing the stems to which belong the various kinds of ammunition we are concerned with here. Many trees of a somewhat similar nature might of course be constructed, fuller and more scientific than Table IV.; but it has the advantage of being very simple and sufficiently comprehensive for the present purpose.

Strictly speaking, the table ought to have included _all_ the ammunition in use between the introduction of cannon and the introduction of rifled arms in the middle of the last century; but the principle has not been pushed to its limit, nor was it necessary to do so in order to enable the reader to form a clear notion of the broad divisions of ammunition. Machines lingered on for some time after the invention of cannon: in fact they were used at the siege of Constantinople in 1453. Their stone balls and pots of Greek fire are not formally included, because what is said of stone shot for guns in Chap. XIII. applies equally to stone balls for machines, and all that it was considered necessary to say about Greek fire has been said in Chap. III. Electric fuzes, and some few species of ammunition of little interest or value, have been also omitted, because their inclusion would have increased the size and complexity of the table without any counterbalancing advantage.

Ammunition for rifled guns has not been included, because it is for the most part an adaptation and development of smooth-bore ammunition.

TABLE IV

┌ Fire Arrows, &c. ┌ Hand ────────────────────────────────────│ Grenades, Incend. and │ └ Explos. │ │ Automatic ───────────────────────────────[ Rockets, War │ │ ┌ Charge ───────────────────────[ Gunpowder │ │ │ │ ┌ Darts, &tc. │ │ │ ┌ Stone │ │ │ Round │ Iron │ Cannon ─ │ ┌ Shock ─│ Shot │ Bronze │ │ │ │ └ Lead │ │ │ │ Case │ │ │ └ Sharapnel │ │ │ │ └ Projectiles ─│ ┌ Hot Shot AMMUNITION ─│ │ Incendiary ────│ Fireballs │ │ │ Shell │ │ └ Carcasses │ │ ┌ │ └ Explosive ─────│ Fireballs │ └ Shell │ │ ┌ Hot Wires │ │ Priming Powder │ │ Matches, Slow and Quick │ Igniters ────────────────────────│ Portfires │ │ ┌ Tubes │ │ Fuzes │ Time │ │ │ Percussion │ └ └ Concussion │ ┌ └ Signals ─────────────────────────────────│ Rockets └ Fixed Lights