d.

_The rammer_ was a wooden cylinder about the same diameter and length
as the shot. It pushed home the powder charge, the wad, and the shot.
As a precaution against faulty or double loading, marks on the rammer
handle showed the loaders when the different parts of the charge were
properly seated.

_The gunner's pick or priming wire_ was a sharp pointed tool
resembling a common ice pick blade. It was used to clear the vent of
the gun and to pierce the powder bag so that flame from the primer
could ignite the charge.

[Illustration: Figure 45--SIXTEENTH CENTURY PATTERN FOR GUNNER'S
LADLE.]

_Handspikes_ were big pinch bars to manhandle cannon. They were used
to move the carriage and to lift the breech of the gun so that the
elevating quoin or screw might be adjusted. They were of different
types (figs. 33a, 44), but were essentially 6-foot-long wooden poles,
shod with iron. Some of them, like the Marsilly handspike (fig. 11),
had rollers at the toe so that the wheelless rear of the carriage
could be lifted with the handspike and rolled with comparative ease.

_The gunner's quadrant_ (fig. 46), invented by Tartaglia about 1545,
was an aiming device so basic that its principle is still in use
today. The instrument looked like a carpenter's square, with a
quarter-circle connecting the two arms. From the angle of the square
dangled a plumb bob. The gunner laid the long arm of the quadrant in
the bore of the gun, and the line of the bob against the graduated
quarter-circle showed the gun's angle of elevation.

The addition of the quadrant to the art of artillery opened a whole
new field for the mathematicians, who set about compiling long,
complicated, and jealously guarded tables for the gunner's guidance.
But the theory was simple: since a cannon at 45 deg. elevation would fire
_ten_ times farther than it would when the barrel was level (at zero deg.
elevation), the quadrant should be marked into _ten_ equal parts; the
range of the gun would therefore increase by _one-tenth_ each time the
gun was elevated to the next mark on the quadrant. In other words, the
gunner could get the range he wanted simply by raising his piece to
the proper mark on the instrument.

[Illustration: Figure 46--SEVENTEENTH CENTURY GUNNER'S QUADRANT. The
long end of the quadrant was laid in the bore of the cannon. The plumb
bob indicated the degree of elevation on the scale.]

Collado explained how it worked in the 1590's. "We experimente