BULLET is the leaden projectile discharged from a musket, fowling-piece, pistol, or similar weapon. When the smooth-bore muskets alone were used by British infantry, the bullets were made by casting. Molten lead was poured into molds; and the molds were dipped in cold water, to hasten the solidification of the lead. The molds were cooled after every few Hines of using; and the lead was heated only just to the degree for maintaining fluidity. Bullets are now, however, made more expeditiously, and more truly spherical in form, by compressing machines, one form of which has been invented by Mr. George Napier. The lead is first fashioned into a rod about a yard long, by five or six eighths of an inch thick; this rod is passed between rollers to con dense it; then between other rollers to press it into a row of nearly globular pieces; then a spherical die gives the proper form to each of these pieces; and, lastly, a treadle worked punch separates them into bullets. With one of these machines and two dies, nine boys can make 40,000 bullets in a day.
Spherical bullets for the old muskets, carbines, and pistols varied from 14 to 20 to the pound, and from 0.60 to 0.68 of an inch in diameter. There is a particular ratio, depending on the specific gravity of lead, by which the number to the pound will give the diameter, or vice vers(i.
Such bullets are, however, becoming every year less and less used in the army, being superseded by other forms better suited for rifles. These forms are singularly numer ous. Robins' B. was egg-shaped, with the center of gravity at the larger end; Beau foy's was ovoid, with a hemispherical cavity at one end; Mantou's was a spherical ball put into a wooden cup, with projections on the exterior; Greener's was oval, with a plug of mixed metal driven into a hole barely large enough for it; Norton's, Delvigne's Minie's and others, are, or were, of various elongated shapes, mostly with some kind of plug, which, driven into the lead by the force of the explosion, causes it to fill up the grooves in the rifling of the barrel. This expanding or dilating action has been claimed by
many inventors; but the government, in 1857, awarded Mr. Greener £1000, as the person who had practically solved the difficulty as far back as 1836. The bullets for the Enfield rifles are now made with extraordinary speed, by machinery of beautiful construction. The machine draws in a coil of leaden rod, unwinds it, cuts it to the required length, stamps out the bullets with steel dies, drops them into boxes, and conveys them away. Each machine, with its four dies, makes 7000 bullets per hour; and four such machines, in an easy day's work, turn out 300,000 bullets. So nearly are the machines automatic, that one man can attend them all. Other machines, attended by children, produce an equal number of little boxwood plugs for filling the cavity at the hinder end of the bul let. The differences between various bullets of modern invention are further noticed under CARTRIDGE and BREECII-LOADLNG ARAN AND NEEDLE-GUNS, or BULLY-TREE, a tree found in Guiana, and valued for its wood, which is solid. heavy, close-grained, and durable, and also for its fruit, which is a drupe about the size of a cherry, sad very delicious. It is supposed to belong to the genus mimusops (natural order sapotaceee, q.v.).