On closing the breech, the bolt pushes the cartridge into the chamber, and when the handle is locked down to the right, a part of the bolt presses against a stud, and thus depresses the trough to be ready to receive another cartridge from the magazine.

The magazine can be cut off and the rifle used as a single loader by pushing forward a thumb-piece on the right side of the shoe.  The effect of this is that, on turning down the handle to lock the bolt, the latter does not act on the stud to depress the carrier, so that no fresh cartridges are fed up from the magazine.

[Illustration:  Fig. 10.—­Lee magazine gun]

There is a projection, Z, on the fore part of the carrier, which keeps the next cartridge from leaving the magazine while the trough is in the upper or loading position.  A supplementary cartridge stop, R, pivoted at P and having a spring, L, underneath it, acts in conjunction with Z in retaining the cartridges in the magazine, and especially in preventing more than one at a time from passing out into the carrier when the latter is depressed; it also retains the cartridges in the magazine tube while the latter is being filled.

Lee Magazine Rifle.—­This arm (see Fig. 10), which occupied the place of honor in the report of the American “Board on Magazine Guns,” embodied two new principles of considerable importance, viz., the central position of the magazine, and having it detachable with ease, so that two or more magazines can be carried by the soldier.

The breech action of the Lee does not materially differ in design from other bolt rifles, except that the bolt is in two pieces only—­the body, or bolt proper, and the hammer or cocking-piece.  The firing pin, or striker, is screwed into the hammer; the spiral main spring, which surrounds the striker, is contained in a hollow in the body.  The handle is placed at the rear end of the bolt, and bent down toward the stock, so as to allow the trigger to be reached without wholly quitting hold of the bolt.  The extractor is so connected with the bolt head as not to share the rotation of the latter when the handle is turned down into the locking position.  When the handle is turned up to unlock the bolt, the hammer is cammed slightly to the rear, by means of oblique bearings on the bolt and hammer, so as to withdraw the point of the striker within the face of the bolt.  This oblique cam action also gives great power to the extractor at first starting the empty cartridge case out of the chamber.

The magazine, M, is simply a sheet iron or steel box of a size to hold five cartridges, but there seems no reason why it should not be of larger dimensions.  It is detachable from the rifle, and is inserted from underneath into a slot or mortise in the stock and in the shoe, in front of the trigger guard.  A magazine catch, C, just above the trigger guard, engages in a notch, N, in the rear of the magazine, the projection,