The recruit or pupil must FIRST have his intelligence distinctly informed, and his memory strongly impressed, with what the Rifle can be made to do at any given distance. He will thus be prepared for instruction, SECONDLY, in the art of making it do what it can do.

The first particular may perhaps be accomplished to full satisfaction by the following method. The trials that now induce the proposal of it,^[17] were, with the regulation musquet, very satisfactory. The various degrees of the power of the weapon were, to the extent the experiment was carried, accurately ascertained and distinctly exhibited.

A piece of level ground must be set apart for rifle practice. The length, with the present power of range, should be from 1400 to 1500 yards. Forty feet would be sufficient for the width, excepting at the permanent butt, where, for security’s sake, it should be at least forty yards. It would be very desirable that no boundary straight walls or fences should guide the eye to the target. At the permanent butt, a racket court wall should be built, from thirty to forty feet high, and from thirty to forty yards wide, with side-wings, to stop glancing shot.

Ten yards in front of this centre should stand a wooden target, painted white if the wall be painted black, or vice versâ; with a “bull’s-eye” at four and a half feet from the ground—this target being divided into square feet by lines, easily distinguishable through a small telescope from the furthest extremity of the range.

From this wooden target, as a commencement, the practice ground should be marked off into lengths of fifty yards each. At each of these fifty-yard stations, two sockets should be sunk into the ground, to hold, when required, the outer frame of an intermediate target.

The inner frame should hang by hinges on the outer, so as to open and shut as a door.

It should be covered with the most yielding material (paper or otherwise), that would stand with an ordinary wind, so as to offer the least possible resistance to a passing bullet.

It should be painted with a “bull’s-eye” and lines, corresponding precisely with those of the wooden target. The wooden target station should be provided with a ball-proof sentry-box for the marker, on wheels; and each of the intermediate stations with a like ball-proof sentry-box, a long wooden shed, with a locker in it for the paper target, and a very solid and steady rest on wheels, with a groove at the top for the steady firing from it of the rifle, at the same height from the ground as the “bull’s-eye” in the targets.

To prevent accidents, four or five bells should be hung on pillars at intervals on the side of the line of practice, with short flag-staffs above them, for the hoisting of signals.

The size of the paper targets should be calculated to include the widest ordinary variations of the bullets. Three feet might be sufficient for the furthest from the butt, the width gradually increasing to twelve feet, at the nearest station to the wooden target. The height must rise and fall, as far as it might be practicable, with the line of the ordinary highest flight of the bullet.

Fifty yards have been given as the proper interval between the paper targets, because that distance suited the round ball and regulation musquet. The very elongated parabola of the course of the conical bullet may admit of that course being sufficiently shown in paper targets one hundred yards apart.

It did not appear, in the experiments made, that the resistance of the paper had any effect of consequence on the flight of the ball. This of course would depend much upon the texture of the covering material. In calm weather, a little water sprinkled on the paper targets would really make resistance nominal.

The foregoing preparations being completed, and the instructor having, by means of them, made himself well acquainted with the powers of his rifle—that rifle, moreover, being of the kind which his recruits or pupils are to bring with them—the squad takes post at the longest effectual range station,—we will say, for the ordinary infantry rifle, at eight hundred yards.

The paper targets are left open, and the wooden target with its “bull’s eye,” seen. The wooden rest is placed in the centre, and a rifle laid steadily in it, at the elevation given by the instructor as necessary for hitting the distant “bull’s eye.”

To prevent accidents, this rifle is not cocked. At a signal given the paper targets are shut, beginning with the nearest to the butt, the recruits being made to remark, as they are successively closed, that the “Bulls’ eyes” are in a perfect line. The nearest bell is rung; two minutes are allowed for persons on the line to run into the ball-proof sentry-boxes, and the shot is steadily fired.

The distance and elevation of the rifle being carefully entered in the firing-book, which every pupil should possess, the squad proceeds to trace, by the paper targets, the course of the ball to its ultimate destination. At every target, the height or depression of the shot in inches from the central line of the “bull’s eye,” is carefully observed, and noted down—the point blank distance is especially entered. The shot-holes, in the meantime, are covered with the smallest possible patches of fresh paper, or, in the wooden target, plugged.

The squad then returns to the next nearest, or seven hundred yards’ station, repeats the same process of levelling a rifle at the elevation ordered by the instructor, and of tracing and noting down the course of the ball; and so on, diminishing each time a hundred yards, and at last to fifty from the target.

By a systematic course of this kind, for which four hours, or half a day, would be sufficient, about twelve men might attain a permanent ocular knowledge of the power of their rifles on level ground at every possible range. It would, of course, be necessary that the rifles and charges should be uniform in size, weight, and quality. The effect of strong side winds upon the bullet (which is considerable) might also sometimes be shown, and rifles accurately proved one against another.

It is very possible to make a rest in which the discharge will only occasion a direct recoil, and it would therefore seem that, with due attention, this mode of proof, and this instruction in what the rifle will do, might be carried very near to perfection.

The next step is to make the soldier do for himself what he has seen his rifle, if properly managed, will do.

For this purpose, the paper targets and frames must be cleared away and stowed in the lockers, the rests wheeled off the line, and half the squad (six men) assembled, rifles not loaded, at the fifty yards from the wooden target station.

The first man is placed in the line of the “bull’s eye,” the rest of the squad lodging their arms in a rack under the shed, and returning to watch the practice attentively.

The man to fire, having loaded very carefully, is asked by the instructor—

Q. What is your distance from the mark?

A. ... yards.

Q. What must be the elevation, or depression?

A. ... inches above, or below, the bull’s eye.

If he should forget, or be incorrect, he is not to be set right by the instructor, but made to refer to his own firing-book for information. Of course, if the rifle be provided with carefully-proved sights, he should be taught to make use of them.

He is then warned to bring up the rifle quietly from the hip, looking, while he does so, at the point he wishes to hit, to shut the left eye close, and to look with the right eye through the sights themselves, and not over or beneath them, to pull the trigger steadily the moment the object is accurately covered, at this instant throwing his attention to the care of keeping the line of barrel direct to the mark until the bullet has left the muzzle—perhaps the most difficult attainment in ball practice, and that which constitutes the greatest difference between a good shot and a bad one.

These principles being clearly communicated, the nearest bell is rung, a minute’s delay given for short distances, and two minutes for long ones, and the shot is fired.

The marker instantly steps out of his ball-proof box, with a light pole, having at its extremity a bright scarlet circle, which he lays upon the shot-hole in the wooden target—the number of inches above or below, and right or left, of the centre of the “bull’s eye” is entered in the firing book—the man falls back to the squad, and the next for firing takes his place.

If a man hit very wide of the proper mark, it might be well to make him fire until he had attained a reasonably good shot, charging to his account the surplus ammunition so expended.

The squad would then fall back to one hundred yards from the wooden target with a repetition of the same practice, then to two hundred, and so on to the longest range. Not more, probably, than three stations could be got through in a day, by any one squad, with advantage.

At the end of each day’s work, a careful return of the details of firing should be sent by the instructor to the commanding officer, in conformity with which, rewards, commendations, and censures, might be finally distributed.

The details of proceeding have been somewhat minutely described, because this elementary instruction, to form a solid and effectual basis for subsequent general practice, should be a minutely patient and careful work. In order, also, to prevent the serious accidents which want of system might occasion, especially at the long ranges, it would be important to establish and maintain minute uniformity of proceeding.

Such a course as that above recommended would only occupy four days, and it would make a man for all his life, if he had the talent to profit by it, a good marksman, with rifles of the same power as that which he had thus carefully proved.

This elementary instruction would not, of course, set aside more free and desultory practice at other times, provided it were carried on with obedience to the general regulations for security against accidents.

It is almost superfluous to observe, that the instructors provided with the “stadia,” and with small telescopes headed with simple “micrometers,” should point out to officers and men the readiest methods of calculating distances.

Taking twenty-five as the average number of pupils that could be, with full advantage, under daily practice, and four days as the period for completing their instruction, one hundred and fifty might be thus finished in the twenty-four (as an average) working days of each month, a battalion of about six hundred men in four months, and consequently twelve hundred men in the eight temperate months (from, about the 1st of March to the 1st of November) in each year.

To complete, therefore, the British army on home service in one year, there would be required about forty such establishments scattered throughout the United Kingdom, and for the volunteer rifle corps and militia about fifty more. After the year of theoretical instruction, they would remain as most useful for freer practice.

The expense would be, the cost of the land, which (considering that strips of worthless soil, or of government ground, might in many instances be procured gratis) should not exceed five hundred pounds the station; and light fencing, the butt, targets, sheds, ball-proof sentry-boxes, rests, and a small house for the marker in charge of the ground, which might average four hundred pounds more. In all nine hundred pounds for each establishment as a permanent outlay, or about thirty-six thousand pounds for the regular army, and forty-five thousand pounds for the volunteer rifle corps and militia.

The markers might be military pensioners, with a small addition to their pay, and the instructors retired officers or non-commissioned officers, with a similar allowance. Many from these classes would be well calculated for such duties, and would enter with spirit into them.

To give complete success to an appeal to the nation for the expenditure thus required, notorious facts, added to a widely-acknowledged principle, mentioned in the first edition of this treatise, should be sufficient: “Every reasonable outlay towards the maintenance of national military efficiency is true economy; and the neglect of it, real extravagance.”—(“Essentials,” Art. 2nd, Correct Firing.)

The notorious facts referred to are, that the marvellous inventive spirit of the age has, at one bound, made military efficiency dependent, in a super-eminent degree, on skill in rifle practice, and that other nations, sensitively alive to the circumstance, are devoting to it immense methodical attention.^[18]