sandstone and iron structure, carrying both railway and road, and replacing the one carried away by floods in 1875. The town contains two Evangelical churches, a castle, formerly a convent and now used as a town hall, and several schools. There is a harbour with quays and a dockyard, also rollingmills and saw-mills, ironworks and sandstone quarries. Other industries are the manufacture of furniture, beer, soap, carriages and bricks. The most important shipping station on the Elbe in Saxony, Riesa is the lading-place for goods to and from Bavaria, and a mart for herrings, petroleum, wood, coal and grain. A constant passenger steamboat communication is maintained with Meissen and Dresden; and, owing to the artillery practice ranges at Zeithain, on the right bank of the Elbe, Riesa has become of recent years one of the chief depots of the Saxon army. Riesa received municipal rights in 1632, and after a period of decay was again raised to the rank of a town in 1859.

RIESENER, JEAN HENRI (1734-1806), French cabinet-maker of the Louis XVI. period, was born at Gladbach near Cologne. At an early age he went to Paris, where he entered the workshop in the Arsenal of Jean François Oeben (q.v.). When that great master died, Riesener became foreman of the works; two years later he married Mme. Oeben, and in 1768 was admitted "maîtremenuisier-ébéniste." His wife died in 1776, and in 1782 he espoused, as his second wife, Anne Grezel, daughter of a bourgeois of Paris. The union was unhappy, and when, under the first Republic, divorce was legalized, the marriage was dissolved. When Riesener contracted his first marriage he possessed little or nothing; his second contract of marriage recited that in cash and in the money due to him by Louis XVI. he was worth more than £20,000, without counting the finished work in hand, bronze models, jewels and personal effects and invested funds. Thus in fifteen years he had accumulated a fortune amounting in all to about £40,000. By that time there had been conferred upon him the title, formerly enjoyed by Oeben, of " Ébéniste du Roi." He died on the 6th of January 1806, in the Enclos des Jacobins, leaving an only son, Henri François (1767-1828), a distinguished portraitpainter of the First Empire. Riesener was unquestionably the greatest of the Louis Seize cabinet-makers. His name is stamped upon the Bureau du Roi in the Louvre, and although the original conception of that master-work was due to Oeben, it cannot be doubted that its consummate finish and perfect achievement must in great measure be attributed to the man who completed it. Occasionally there may, perhaps, be some lack of spontaneity in his forms, but his work is generally at once bold and graceful. His marquetry presents an extraordinary finish; his chiselled bronzes are of the first excellence. He was especially distinguished for his cabinets, in which he employed many European as well as exotic woods. Wreaths and bunches of flowers form the centres of the panels; on the sides are often diaper patterns in quiet colours. Yet despite his distinction as a maker of cabinets his high-water mark was reached in the Bureau du Roi, finished in 1769 and consequently belonging rather to the Louis Quinze than the Louis Seize period, and a not altogether dissimilar cylinder bureau believed to have been made for Stanislas Leszczynski, king of Poland, now in the Wallace Collection. Stanislas died in 1766, but the desk was not completed until February 20, 1769, as appears by the inscription accompanying the maker's signature. Upon its completion it passed into the possession of the French crown and was included in a sale of the royal furniture which took place in Holland. It was purchased by Sir William Hamilton, then British Minister at the Hague, and appears to have passed out of his hands when he left Naples, where it was purchased by Sir Richard Wallace. At Buckingham Palace there is a third bureau on the same lines. These pieces are triumphs of marquetry. They are inlaid with trophies of musical instruments, doves, bouquets and garlands of flowers; the bronze vases and "galleries are exquisite-they may possibly be the work of Gouthière, but are more probably from the hands of Duplessis. For several years this great artist appears to have used the models of his master Oeben, but there was a gradual transition to a style more individual, more

delicately conceived, with finer but hardly less vigorous lines. By the time he had been working alone for ten years he had completely embraced the Louis Seize manner-he had, perhaps, some responsibility for it. One of the most distinguished of his achievements for the court was the famous flat writing-table now at the Petit Trianon, for which he received only £200. The extent of these royal orders may be gauged from the fact that between 1775 and 1785 Riesener received 500,000 livres from the Garde Meubles, notwithstanding that during the whole of this period Gondouin the architect was the official designer of furniture for the royal palaces. Like so many other artists he was condemned in the end to sacrifice to the false taste of his day, and a certain number of his creations, otherwise delightful, were vitiated by being mounted with panels of Sèvres, Wedgwood and other china. The beautiful little secretaire in the Jones collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum suffers seriously by this lapse.

RIESENGEBIRGE (Bohemian Krkonose), or Giant Mountains, a lofty and rugged group on the boundary of Silesia and Bohemia, between the upper courses of the Elbe and the Oder. They form the highest portion of the Sudetic system which separates south-east Prussia from the Austrian empire, and finds its natural continuation towards the N.W. in the Erzgebirge, the Thuringian Forest and the Harz Mountains. Adjoining the Isergebirge and the Lausitzergebirge on the W., and the Eulengebirge and the Adlergebirge on the E. and S.E., the Riesengebirge proper run S.E. and N.W. between the sources of the Zacken and the Bober, for a distance of 23 m., with a breadth of 14 m. They cover an area of about 425 sq. m., three-fourths of which is in Austrian, and the remainder in Prussian territory. The boundary line follows the crest of the principal chain or ridge (Riesenkamm), which stretches along the northern side of the group, with an average height of over 4000 ft. The principal peaks are the Reifträger (4430 ft.), the Hohe Rad (4968 ft.), the Great Sturmhaube (4862 ft.), the Little Sturmhaube (4646 ft.), and, near the east extremity, the Schneekoppe or Riesenkoppe (5266 ft.), the loftiest mountain in northern or central Germany. Roughly parallel to this northern ridge, and separated from it by a long narrow valley known as the Siebengründe, there extends on the S. a second and lower chain, of broad massive "saddles," with comparatively few peaks. The chief heights here are the Kesselkoppe (4708 ft.), the Krkonose (4849 ft.), the Ziegenrücken and the Brunnenberg (5072 ft.). From both ridges spurs of greater or less length are sent off at various angles, whence a magnificent view is obtained from Breslau to Prague; the lowlands of Silesia, watered by the Oder, and those of Bohemia, intersected by the Elbe and the Moldau, appearing to lie mapped in relief. The summit is crowned by a chapel dedicated to St Lawrence, which once also served as a travellers' shelter. Since 1850 the chapel has been restored to its religious use, and a hotel for the accommodation of tourists is built close by. A remarkable group of isolated columnar rocks are those known as the Adersbacher Felsen in a valley on the Bohemian side of the Riesengebirge, 9 m. W.N.W. of Braunau.

On its northern side this mountain group rises ruggedly and precipitously from the Hirschberg valley; but on its southern side its slope towards Bohemia is very much more gradual. The scenery is in general bold and wild. The Bohemian ridge is cleft about the middle by a deep gorge through which pour the headwaters of the river Elbe, which finds its source in the Siebengründe. The Iser, Bober, Aupa, Zacken, Queiss, and a great number of smaller streams also rise among these mountains or on their skirts; and small lakes and tarns are not unfrequent in the valleys. The Great and Little Schneegruben-two deep rocky gorge-like valleys in which snow remains all the year round-lie to the north of the Hohe Rad.

Nearly the whole of the Riesenkamm and the western portion of the southern chain are granite; the eastern extremity of the main ridge and several mountains to the south-cast are formed of a species of gneiss; and the greater part of the Bohemian chain, especially its summits, consists of mica-slate. Blocks of these minerals lie scattered on the sides and ridges of the mountains and

in the beds of the streams; and extensive turf moors occupy many of the mountain slopes and valleys. The lower parts of the Riesengebirge are clad with forests of oak, beech, pine and fir; above 1600 ft. only the last two kinds of trees are found, and beyond about 3950 ft. only the dwarf pine (Pinus Pumilio). Various alpine plants are found on the Riesengebirge, some of them having been artificially introduced on the Schneekoppe. Wheat is grown at an elevation of 1800 ft. above the sea-level, and oats as high as 2700 ft. The inhabitants of this mountain region, who are tolerably numerous, especially on the Bohemian side, live for the most part, not in villages, but in scattered huts called Bauden." They support themselves by the rearing of cattle, tillage, glass-making and linen-weaving. Mining is carried on only to a small extent for arsenic, although there are traces of former more extensive workings for other metals.

Rietschel's style was very varied; he produced works imbued with much religious feeling, and to some extent he occupied the same place as a sculptor that Overbeck did in painting. Other important works by him were purely classical in style. He was specially famed for his portrait figures of eminent men, treated with much idealism and dramatic vigour; among the latter class his chief works were colossal statues of Goethe and Schiller for the town of Weimar, of Weber for Dresden and of Lessing for Brunswick. He also designed the memorial statue of Luther for Worms, but died before he could carry it out. The principal among Rietschel's religious pieces of sculpture are the well-known Christ-Angel, and a life-sized Pietà, executed for the king of Prussia. He also worked a great deal in rilievo, and produced many graceful pieces, especially a fine series of bas-reliefs representing Night and Morning, Noon and Twilight, designed with much poetical feeling and imagination. For a good biography of Rietschel and account of his works see Appermann, Ernst Rietschel (Leipzig, 1863). (J. H. M.) RIEU, CHARLES PIERRE HENRI (1820-1902), Swiss Orientalist, was born at Geneva in 1820. He studied at Bonn University, where he received his doctor's degree in 1843. He entered the British Museum in 1847, and after twenty years of

name.

See Beemann's Oratio de monte Giganteo (Frankfort a. O. 1679); Daniel, Deutschland, vol. i. pp. 277-78; and Gebauer, Länder- und Völkerkunde, vol. i.

RIETI (anc. Reate), a city and episcopal see of Italy, in the province of Perugia, 251 m. by rail and 15 m. direct S.S.E. of Terni, which is 70 m. by rail from Rome. Pop. (1901) 14,145 (town), 17,716 (commune). It occupies a fine position 1318 ft. above sea-level on the right bank of the Velino (a torrent subtributary to the Tiber), which at this point issues from the limestone plateau; the old town occupies the declivity and the new town spreads out on the level. While with its quaint redroofed houses, its old town walls (restored about 1250), its castle, its cathedral (13th and 15th centuries), its episcopal palace (1283), and its various churches and convents Rieti has no small amount of medieval picturesqueness; it also displays a good deal of modern activity in vine and olive growing and cattle-breeding. The fertility of the neighbourhood is celebrated both by Virgil and by Cicero. A Roman bridge over the Turano, and the Palazzo Vincentini by Vignola deserve to be mentioned.

Reate was reached from Rome by the Via Salaria (q.v.), which may originally have ended there, and a branch road ran from it to Interamna. While hardly mentioned in connexion with the Punic or Civil Wars, Reate is described by Strabo as exhausted by these long contests. Its inhabitants received the Roman franchise at the same time with the rest of the Sabines (290 B.C.), but it appears as a praefectura and not as a municipium down to the beginning of the empire. It was never made a colonia, though veterans of the Praetorian guard and of the eighth (Augusta) and ninth legions were settled there by Vespasian, who belonged to a Reatine family and was born in the neighbourhood. For the contests of the Reatines with the people of Interamna see TERNI. In 1148 the town was besieged and captured by Roger I. of Sicily. In the struggle between church and empire it always held with the former; and it defied the forces of Frederick II. and Otho IV. Pope Nicholas IV. long resided at Rieti, and it was there he crowned Charles II. of Anjou king of the Two Sicilies. In the 14th century Robert, and afterwards Joanna, of Naples managed to keep possession of Rieti for many years, but it returned to the States of the Church under Gregory IX. About the year 1500, the liberties of the town, long defended against the encroachments of the popes, were entirely abolished. An earthquake in 1785 was in 1799 followed by the much more disastrous pillage of Rieti by the papal troops for a space of fourteen days.

RIETSCHEL, ERNST FRIEDRICH AUGUST (1804-1861), German sculptor, was born at Pulsnitz in Saxony. At an early age he became an art student at Dresden, and subsequently a pupil of Rauch in Berlin. He there gained an art studentship, and studied in Rome in 1827-28. After returning to Saxony he soon brought himself into notice by a colossal statue of Frederick Augustus, king of Saxony; was elected a member of the academy of Dresden, and thenceforth became one of the chief sculptors of his country. In 1832 he was elected to the Dresden professorship of sculpture, and had many foreign orders of merit conferred on him by the governments of different countries. He died at Dresden in 1861.

was created for him. He completed in 1871 the second part, dealing with Arabian MSS., of the Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum orientalium, which had been begun by William Cureton, and he issued a supplementary volume in 1894. He also drew up a Catalogue of the Turkish Manuscripts (1888) and a Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts (4 vols., 1879–95), the latter being a storehouse of information on the books and their authors. In 1895 he was made professor of Arabic in the university of Cambridge in succession to Robertson Smith. He died in London on the 19th of March 1902.

RIEVAULX, a village in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England, 3 m. W. by N. of the small town of Helmsley, which is served by a branch of the North-Eastern railway. Here, exquisitely situated in a deep wooded valley, are the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey, a foundation by Walter l'Espec in 1131 for Cistercians. The principal remains are those of the cruciform church, mainly Early English in date, and of the finest workmanship. There are considerable fragments of the refectory, and all the important domestic buildings may be traced. A beautiful prospect over the ruins and the valley is seen from the terrace on the eastern flanking hill.

RIFFIANS, the name given to the Berbers of the Rîf district of Morocco, the mountain region bordering the north coast from Ceuta eastward nearly to the borders of Algeria and forming part of the Atlas range. The name, it has been suggested, is identical with Libyan or Lîbi. A peculiarity of the Rîf dialect is the change of the Arabic "1" to "r," and this would seem to support this derivation, "b" and "f" being interchangeable through "v." The Riffians are only nominally subject to the sultan of Morocco, against whose authority they are in constant revolt. They are typical Berbers in physique, tall, well made and muscular, with European features and fair skins bronzed by the sun. In morality they are singularly superior to their neighbours. In order to prevent youthful unchastity, marriages are contracted between children of eight years old, the girl being brought home to live with the lad at his parents' home till a child is born, when a separate dwelling is provided for the youthful couple. The women are noted for their beauty. The Riffians understand and speak Arabic very little. They were among the fiercest and most cruel of the pirates of the north coast of Africa. Even now they are entirely untrustworthy in this respect. See further BERBERS, MOROCCO, MOORS, KABYLES, Mzabites.

RIFLE, a firearm which may be shortly defined as a musket in which, by grooves (cf. Ger. riffeln, to groove) in the bore or otherwise, the projectile is forced to rotate before leaving the barrel. This rotatory motion, maintained during flight, equalizes any irregularities in the form or weight of the bullet, and so lessens the tendency to depart from a straight line, and also in a measure overcomes atmospheric resistance. Rifling was invented about 1520, by Gaspard Koller or Kollner, a gunmaker of Vienna, according to some authorities; by August Kotter of Nuremberg, according to others. It has been said

that at first the grooves were made straight, with the object of admitting a tight-fitting bullet and relieving the effects of fouling, and that the virtue of spiral grooving was subsequently discovered by accident. But this theory is unsupported. The earliest known rifle barrels have spiral grooving. The amount of turn varied in old rifles from a half or three-quarters turn to one turn in two to three feet. The form and depth of the grooving and the number of grooves also greatly varied.

66

Historical Development of Military Rifles. —For the chief infantry firearms that preceded the modern military rifle, see GUN, ARMS AND ARMOUR (firearms), ARQUEBUS, &c. Rifles were at first used for amusement. There are, however, instances of their occasional employment in war in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1631 the landgrave of Hesse had a troop of riflemen. Ten years later Maximilian of Bavaria had several troops armed with rifled arquebuses. Louis XIII. armed his bodyguard with rifles. Napoleon withdrew the rifle from those of his troops to whom it had been issued during the wars of the Republic, nor did the French make any considerable use of it again until 1830, when the Chasseurs d'Orléans were armed with it for the invasion of Algeria. The British learnt the value of rifles during the American War of Independence, when the government subsidized continental Jägers armed with rifles to oppose the American riflemen. After the war these corps disappeared, and though they are now represented by the 60th (King's Royal) Rifles, the senior rifle corps in the British Army is the Rifle Brigade, raised in 1800 as the 95th Regiment and armed with a flint-lock weapon known as Baker's Rifle," which weighed 9 b. The barrel was 24 ft. long, its calibre 20-bore, with seven grooves making a quarter-turn in its length. A small wooden mallet was at first supplied with this rifle to make the ball enter the barrel, and it was loaded with great difficulty. In 1826 Delvigne, a French infantry officer, invented a breech with abrupt shoulders on which the spherical bullet was rammed down until it expanded and filled the grooves. The objection was that the deformed bullet had an erratic flight. Delvigne's system was subsequently improved upon by Thouvenin, who introduced into the breech an iron stem, upon which the bullet, now of conical form, rested, and was expanded by a sharp blow with the iron ramrod when loading. In William IV.'s reign the Brunswick percussion rifle 1 was introduced into the British rifle regiments. Its weight with bayonet was 11 lb 5 oz.; length of barrel, 2 ft. 6 in., with two grooves making one turn in the length of the barrel; weight of spherical belted bullet, 557 grs.; diameter, 704 in.; charge of powder, 2 drs. This rifle was not easily loaded, soon fouled, and shot wild beyond 400 yds.

1

In 1835 W. Greener produced a new expansive bullet, an oval ball, a diameter and a half in length, with a flat end, perforated, in which a cast metallic taper plug was inserted. The explosion of the charge drove the plug home, expanded the bullet, filled the grooves and prevented windage. A trial of the Greener bullet in August 1835 proved successful. The range and accuracy of the rifle were retained, while the loading was made as easy as with a smooth-bore musket. The invention was, however, rejected by the military authorities on the ground that the bullet was a compound one. In 1852 the Government awarded Minié, a Frenchman, £20,000 for a bullet of the same principle adopted into the British service. In 1857 Greener received a belated reward of £1000 for "the first public suggestion of the principle of expansion." The Minié bullet contained an iron cup in a cavity at the base of the bullet. In 1851 a rifled musket of the Minié pattern was introduced into the British army, and, though not generally issued, was used in the Kaffir War of 1851, and in the Crimea. Its weight with bayonet was 10 lb 8 oz., length of barrel 3 ft. 3 in., with four grooves making one turn in 72 in.; diameter of bore 702 inch;

1 The percussion principle, invented by the Rev. Alexander John Forsyth (1768-1843) in 1805, was not accepted for military arms until the introduction of this rifle. A small and belated money

grant was made to Forsyth in 1843. See Major-General A. J. F. Reid's memoir of Forsyth (1910).

charge of powder 2 drs., and sighted from 100 to 1000 yds. The form of its bullet was at first conoidal, afterwards changed to cylindro-conoidal, with a hemispherical iron cup. In 1855 the Enfield rifle, having in a series of trials competed favourably with the Minié and Lancaster rifles, was introduced into the British army; it was used during the latter part of the Crimean war, having there replaced the Minié rifle and the percussion musket, and remained the general weapon of the entire infantry until the introduction of the breech-loader in the year 1867. This rifle weighed, with bayonet, 9 lb 3 oz., barrel 39 in.; diameter of bore 577 in.; three-grooved, with one turn in 78 in. It fired a bullet of cylindro-conoidal form with hollow base, weighing 530 grains, made up into cartridges and lubricated as for the Minié rifle, adapted to this rifle by Pritchett, who was awarded £1000 by the Government. This bullet was wrapped in greased paper round the cylindrical part half-way up its length. Short rifles of the same pattern, with five-grooved barrels 2 ft. 9 in. long and a sword bayonet, were supplied to the 60th Rifles and to the Rifle Brigade. Two small carbines of the same principle were at this time introduced for the cavalry and artillery, also a rifled pistol.

In 1854, on the suggestion of General Lord Hardinge, Sir Joseph Whitworth, the first mechanician of the day, began to consider the subject of rifling, and after a long series of experiments the Whitworth rifle was produced with hexagonal bore, 45-in. calibre, and with one turn in 20 in. It was tried at Hythe in 1857, and completely defeated the Enfield rifle up to 1800 yds. upon a fixed rest. This trial and Whitworth's experiments proved the advantages of a sharp twist, a smaller bore, and elongated projectile; but Whitworth's rifle was never adopted into the Government service, probably because the hexagonal rifling wore badly, and owing to the difficulty of equal mechanical perfection in all similar rifles and ammunition. Several improvements were subsequently made in the sighting, grooving and some other details of the Enfield rifle. In 1855 a boxwood plug to the bullet was used.

Between 1857 and 1861 four breech-loading carbines were experimentally introduced in the cavalry-viz. Sharp's, Terry's, Green's, and Westley-Richards'. Sharp's and other breechloading carbines and also Spencer repeating carbines were used by the Federal cavalry in the American Civil War. The general adoption of the breech-loading principle may be said to date from 1867. The Prussians

were the first to see its great advantages, and about 1841 had adopted the celebrated needle-gun (q.v.), a bolt-action weapon. In 1864 and 1866 committees were appointed by the British War Office to report on breech-loading arms, and after protracted experiments, Jacob Snider's method of conversion of the muzzle - loading Enfield to a breechloader (fig. 1) was adopted, with the metallic cartridge-case improved in 1867 by Colonel Boxer, R.A. All available Enfield rifles were thus converted, and new arms made with steel barrels instead of iron. Great Britain was the first to adopt for her army a breech - loading

FIG. 1.-Snider Rifle. (Text Book of Small
Arms, by permission of the Controller,
H.M. Stationery Office.)

rifle with metallic cartridge-case, which secured the perfect obturation of the breech. The Snider breech was a hinged block, a type much in favour at the time. The French similarly converted their muzzle-loaders, the converted weapon being known as the Tabatière or snuff-box. Other breech actions on the same principle were the Austrian Werndl and the Bavarian Podewils and Werder rifles. But these were only transitional arms. In 1866 France adopted the bolt-action Chassepôt (q.v.); in 1867 Sweden the Hagström, and Russia the Carte; in 1868 Italy the Carcano. All these were breechloaders firing paper cartridges containing their own means of ignition. After further experiments by a fresh committee the Martini-Henry rifle (fig. 2) was definitely adopted by the British on has gaben 10 151

Government in 1871, with the short chamber Boxer-Henry ammunition. This rifle was a combination of Martini's blockaction breech mechanism with Henry's barrel of 45-in. calibre, firing a papered bullet of 480 grains from Boxer cases with a wad of wax lubrication at base of bullet, as proposed by Henry. The Henry rifling had seven grooves with one turn in 22 in.; the lands and the centres of the grooves were contained in the same circle. About the same time or a little later the various powers re-armed their infantry with breech-loaders of different patterns and names, all of which were of about 11 mm. (433 in.) calibre, and nearly all of the bolt-action type.

The next stage in the history of military firearms was the introduction of the repeating or magazine system. The Winchester rifle, an American invention which appeared in 1867, was one of the earliest magazine rifles. This weapon was used by Turkey to some extent in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, but Germany was the first great power to provide its army with a magazine rifle. In 1884 it converted the 1871 pattern Mauser of 443-in. bore into a magazine rifle, holding eight cartridges in a tube magazine in the fore-end. In 1885 France followed with the Lebel, which had an enormous advantage in its smokeless powder. In 1886 the question of the best calibre for small arms was reopened in England. In this year, 1886, Austria had adopted a Mannlicher rifle, 433 bore, with a straightpull bolt. This rifle was the first adopted by any European nation embodying Lee's box magazine, an invention patented in 1879 and 1882, and consisting of a box, in rear of and below the entrance to the chamber, containing the cartridges. Another

important improvement, the steel clip loader containing five cartridges, was also introduced with this rifle. In 1888 these rifles were converted to -315 bore, firing black powder cartridges; and in 1890, on the introduction of smokeless powder, the sights were re-graduated. In 1887 the British Small Arms Committee, after experiments with the small-calibre rifle invented in 1883 by the Swiss Major Rubin, director of the Federal laboratory at Thun, recommended the small calibre for adoption into the British service. The essential features of Rubin's system were the employment of a compound bullet with a leaden core in a copper envelope, and the use of a compressed charge of black powder. In 1888 a pattern of 303-in. calibre rifle, rifled on the Metford system and with the improved Lee bolt and magazine, was approved for trial by British troops. The Metford rifling is as follows:-diameter of bore, 303 in.; depth of rifling, 004 in.; width of lands, 023 in.; twist of rifling, one turn in 10 in. (left-hand); radial grooves, seven in number. About 1862, and later, W. E. Metford had carried out an exhaustive series of experiments on bullets and rifling He invented the important system of light rifling, with increasing spiral with a hardened bullet. The Metford match rifle was prominent in all N.R.A. competitions from 1871 to 1894. In 1887 he laid down for the Small Arms Committee the proper proportions for the grooving, spiral and cartridge chamber of the .303 military rifle. This weapon proved satisfactory and was adopted by the War Office as the Lee-Metford rifle, Mark I., in December 1888. It had a magazine of eight cartridges. In 1891 the Mark II. pattern was approved, with a ten-cartridge magazine, a simplified bolt, and many minor improvements. A magazine carbine with barrel 21 in. long and a six-cartridge magazine, otherwise identical with the Lee-Metford Mark II., was also approved. The Lee-Metford Mark II. rifle was subsequently further improved in its rifling to resist the wear of smokeless power, and also in its bolt action, and became known as the Lee-Enfield rifle, and under that name was officially adopted as the rifle of the Britsh army. The number of grooves were reduced from seven to five. Neither the Lee-Metford nor the Lee-Enfield has increasing spiral grooves, which are found inconvenient for military arms from a manufacturing point of view.1 The L.M. and L.E. carbines are similar to the shorter models of the rifles, but are covered for the whole length of the barrel by a wooden handguard and take only six cartridges; the fore-sights are protected by wings on the nose-cap, and the long-range sights are omitted. These, as also the Martini-Metford and Martini-Enfield carbines (falling-block action small-bores), have practically been replaced by the "short " rifle described below. The efficiency of the modern small-bore magazine rifle is largely due to the production of smokeless nitro-compound powder. France was the first country to adopt, about 1885, a smokeless powder with the Lebel magazine rifle. It was known as" Vieille" powder, or " Poudre B" (after General Boulanger). Since then smokeless explosives have been universally adopted in all small-bore magazine military rifles. The smokeless explosive known as "Cordite" or "Cordite M.D." (see CORDITE) is used for the cartridges of the Lee-Metford and Lee-Enfield rifles and rifle-calibre machine guns. (H. S.-K.)

Military Rifles of To-day.-About 1900, the various armies were equipped with weapons of nearly equal efficiency. The weights varied between 8 and 9 lb, the lengths between 49 and 52 in.; the calibres were 315, 311, 303, with one or two 256. None of the rifles were sighted to less than 2000 yds., and nearly all had a "fixed" or battle" sight. All were bolt-action rifles, and had a muzzle velocity of about 2000 f.s. (the 256 Mannlichers, about 2300 f.s.). Except France, with the tube-magazine Lebel, Denmark and the U.S.A. with the horizontal-box Krag-Jörgensen, and Great Britain, all nations used multiple-loading by clip or charger. With Lebel and Krag-Jörgensen weapons, multiple-loading is a practical impossibility, but in Great Britain the charger was deliberately rejected. It was desired to use the rifle normally as a 1 Of all modern military rifles, the Italian 1891 weapon alone has an increasing twist.

1