EXPLOSIONS AND EXPLOSIVES. 773 



ciples, and of which only the closing portion sets forth ethical con- 

 clusions as corollaries from all the conclusions that have preceded. 



There remains only to answer the question, How could Mr. Mozley 

 have been led to imagine a resemblance between things so different ? 

 He has himself gone far toward furnishing an explanation. In his 

 introduction (page 1) he admits, or rather asserts, that " reminiscences 

 are very suspicious matter " ; and that " the mental picture of events 

 long passed by, and seen through an increasing breadth of many-tinted 

 haze, is liable to be warped and colored by more recent remembrances, 

 and by impressions received from other quarters." He adds sundry 

 illustrations of the extreme untrustworthiness of memory concerning 

 the remote past ; and in chapter lxxxiii he characterizes Denison's 

 " Reminiscences of Oriole College " as a " jumble of inaccuracies, ab- 

 surdities, and apparent forgets." Moreover, he indicates (page 4) a spe- 

 cial cause of distortion, saying of those " whose memory is subordinate 

 to imagination and passion" that " they remember too easily, too 

 quickly, and too much as they please." Now, as is implied by his re- 

 ligious ideas and ecclesiastical leanings, and as is also shown by a 

 passage in which he refers to the scientific school with manifest aver- 

 sion, Mr. Mozley is biased toward an interpretation which tends to 

 discredit this school, or a part of it ; and, obviously, to fancy a resem- 

 blance between scientific views now current and those which he de- 

 scribes as a " dream " of his youth, which disappeared with his man- 

 hood, is not unsatisfactory. On looking through the "many-tinted 

 haze " of sixty years at what he admits to be " a vague idea " of his 

 early philosophy, he has unconsciously " warped and colored " it, and 

 imagined in it a resemblance which, as I have shown, it could not pos- 

 sibly have had. 



I will add only that serious injustice is apt to be done by publica- 

 tion of reminiscences which concern others than the writer of them. 

 "Widely diffused as is Mr. Mozley's interesting work, his statement will 

 be read and accepted by thousands who will never see this rectifica- 

 tion. Athenceum. 



+*+- 



EXPLOSIONS AND EXPLOSIVES. 



By ALLAN D. BROWN, 



COiClfANDER, TOTTED STATES NAVY. 



THE chief explosive mixture used in the arts of war and peace will 

 probably for a long time continue to be that which we know by 

 the name of gunpowder. It has been used so long that its origin (like 

 that of the mariner's compass) is entirely lost in the misty atmosphere 

 of the middle ages, if indeed it was not known before the Christian 

 era. The ingredients spoken of by Roger Bacon in 1237, in his for- 



