[Letter] [18]64 February 23 [to] Dr. Percy / JH Lefroy.

The letter is written on letterhead bearing a raised white seal.

Lefroy reports that there have been about 2239 guns delivered and specifies the persons in command who have received them and whether or not these guns have "burst" in action (he mentions one case occurring in Sevastopol, a city in Ukraine almost entirely destroyed during the Crimean War, 1853-56). Lefroy agrees about the Sir Emerson Tennant article and newspaper controversy about big guns, admitting that they are "tongue tied and cannot expose either the falsity of some assertions or the absurdities of others." Lefroy writes with frustration about the public and press perception of the military, unaware of the ways in which their defense munitions are hampered by governmental decree. An English soldier and meteorologist, Lefroy began his career in the Royal Artillery, moving to the Engineers; he made magnetic observations and explorations in Canada along the Hudson Bay and later founded the Canadian Institute at Toronto (1849). After serving in the War Office in the early 1850s, Lefroy published a handbook on field artillery (1854), of which 300 copies went to the Crimea during the conflict. Lefroy himself went to Constantinople to consult on the welfare of wounded soldiers (where he met Florence Nightingale). He later became governor of Bermuda (1871-77) and then Tasmania (1880-81).