CHASSEPOT —CHATHAM ISLANDS 705 manufactures of carpets and woollens, and some trade in Marines’ school, and two garrison schools. The royal tobacco and silk. The quantity of cocoons raised in the dockyard has a river frontage of more than three miles district in 1899 was 109,218 kilogrammes, valued at and an area of about 500 acres. One basin is 800 feet .£12,494. Population, 14,392. wide, with a quay frontage of 6000 feet. The rope-house Chassepot.—The Chassepot rifle, so named after is 1140 feet long by 50 feet wide. The dockyard employs its designer, was a modification of the Dreyse rifle—the 7000 workmen. Extensive naval barracks are in course so-called Prussian “needle gun” of 1841. It was adopted of construction, also a naval hospital. A pier was built by France in 1866, and was the weapon with which her in 1886, and belongs to the corporation, and a railway troops were armed in the Franco-German war of 1870-71. bridge over the Medway was finished in 1890. In front It is a breech-loader, with its breech closed by a bolt very of the Royal Engineers’ Institute is a statue (1890) of similar in shape and action to those now in use (see Small Arms). General Gordon, and near the railway station another The cartridge case is, however, cylindrical throughout, and of (1888) to Waghorn, promoter of the overland route to paper, with stout cardboard wads at the top and bottom, the percussion cap being imbedded in the latter, and also covered in rear India. Area of municipal borough, 4336 acres : population with a disc of india-rubber. The bullet is rolled up in greased (1881), 26,424; (1891), 31,657; (1901), 36,937. paper and attached to the case by the paper wrapping being Chatham, an incorporated town and port of entry, extended over the sides of the case and bound with twine. The cartridge case plays no part in obturation (except the india-rubber Canada, New Brunswick, on the Miramichi river, 24 miles disc over the cap, as will be explained), and the bolt therefore has from its mouth and 10 miles by rail from Chatham juncto perform this function. The arrangements to effect this are as tion on the intercolonial railway. The town contains the follows: In front of, and attached to, the bolt proper is a Roman Catholic pro-cathedral, 4 churches, 2 branch banks, mushroom-shaped bolt-head, capable of a slight longitudinal movement independent of the bolt. Threaded on to the spindle of and 2 newspapers, many large saw-mills, 2 pulp-mills, and the bolt-head, and between its rear face and the front of the bolt several establishments for exporting fish. The lumber proper, is an india-rubber ring. On closing the bolt this ring is trade, the fisheries, and the manufacture of pulp are the compressed between the faces of the bolt and bolt-head and forced chief industries. Exports in 1899-1900 were valued at outwards against the sides of the breech recess. When the rifle fires the pressure of the gas compresses the india-rubber still more, $1,483,563, imports at $161,378. Population (1900), and so seals escape.. (The arrangement is very similar to the “ de about 6000. The town is also called Miramichi. Ban go. obturator in heavy guns.) The escape round the striker Chatham, a town and port of entry of Ontario, point is fairly sealed by the india-rubber disc over the percussion cap. This is pierced by the striker, and is therefore blown back Canada, and the capital of Kent county, situated 64 over the annulus between the striker and the hole for it in the bolt- miles S.W. of London, and 11 miles N. of Lake Erie, on head. The metallic self-obturating cartridge case was adopted by all nations very shortly after 1870, Great Britain having already the Thames River and the Grand Trunk, Canadian Pacific, and Lake Erie and Detroit River railways. There is also done so in the Snider rifle in 1865. steamboat communication with Detroit. It contains an The details of the Chassepot are :— Weight with bayonet extensive waggon factory, planing and flour mills, manu10 lb 12 oz. Weight without bayonet 9 lb 5 oz. factories of fanning mills, woven wire goods, engines, Length with bayonet 6 ft. 2 in. windmills, &c. Incorporated as a city in 1895, it had a Length without bayonet 4 ft. 4 in. population of 7873 in 1881 and of 9068 in 1901. Calibre •433 in. Number of grooves 4. Chatham Islands, a small group of islands Depth ,, •012. forming part of New Zealand, 536 miles due E. of / one turn in 21'2 Twist of rifling . Lyttelton in the South Island. Little change has taken
inches, left hand.
place since 18/5, except that cultivation has somewhat 1312 yards. si for <HKf 219 ,, extended, and the native population, the Morioris (who 2'68 inches. Cartridge belong to the same race as the Maoris of New Zealand, 494 grains. and are but slightly modified by long isolation), have con{Material Lead. Length . siderably decreased. The larger island of the group '98 inch. Diameter •465 „ Whairikauri—whose highest point reaches about 1000 Weight . 386 grains. Charge 86-4 ,, (black powder). feet, is remarkable for the number of lakes and tarns it contains, and for the extensive bogs which cover the Muzzle velocity . 1328 feet per second. surface of nearly the whole of the uplands. There are (h. W. B.) Chateaubriant, chief town of arrondissement, no indigenous mammals; the reptiles belong to New department of Loire Inferieure, France, 40 miles N.N.E. Zealand species. The birds—the largest factor in the of Nantes. It has become an important railway centre on fauna—have become very greatly reduced through the lines to Paris and Orleans. Population (1881), 3748 • introduction of cats, dogs, and pigs, as well as by the constant persecution of every sort of animal by the natives. (1896), 5808, (comm.) 6884. The larger bell-bird (Antkornis melanocephala) has become Chatelineau, a town of Belgium, in the province of Hainaut, on the Sambre, 27 miles E. of Mons, with a quite scarce ; the magnificent fruit-pigeon (Carpophaga station on the railway between Charleroi and Namur. It chathamensis), the two endemic rails (Nesolivnnas dieffejihas coal-mines and iron-works. Population (communal) bachii and Cabalus modestus), the one of which was confined to Whairikauri and the other to Mangare Island, have (1880), 8290; (1897), 11,950. become exterminated. Several fossil or subfossil avian Chatham, a municipal (1890) and parliamentary forms, very interesting from the point of view of geoborough of Kent, England, on the Medway, adjoining the graphical distribution, have in the interval been discovered city of Rochester, 34 miles E.S.E. of London by rail. by Dr H. O. Forbes, namely, a true species of raven The town is divided into three wards, under a mayor, 6 (PalcBocorax moriorum), a remarkable rail (Diaphor-apaldermen, and 18 councillors. It has large and important teryx closely related to the extinct Aphanapteryx of naval and military stations, and a royal dockyard. Christ Mauritius, and a large coot (Palceolimnas chathaniensis). Church, Luton, was erected in 1885. Recent erections There have come to light also the remains of a species of are a Congregational church, a town hall and municipal swan belonging to the South American genus Chenopis offices (opened 1900, cost about £28,000), a technical in- and of the tuatara (Ilatteria) lizard, the unique species of stitute and school of art. Among the schools are a an ancient family now surviving only in New Zealand. Royal Engineers’ school of military engineering, a Royal The swan is identical with an extinct species found in S. II. — 89
