SCIENCE AND WAR. 603 



the Vienna arsenal is engaged in the manufacture of heavy guns of 

 the same character. Never was a more energetic step taken. A new 

 cannon of some sort was held to be absolutely necessary to uphold 

 the prestige of the army, and a commission having been intrusted 

 with the selection of an arm, pronounced without delay in favor of the 

 scheme brought forward by General von Uchatius. In October, 1874, 

 the first round was fired from a Uchatius gun, and a twelvemonth 

 afterward the sweeping reform which was to introduce an entirely 

 new artillery throughout the Austrian service was decided upon. 

 Government sanctioned an expenditure of 1,800,000 to be spent in 

 two years, and General von Uchatius was directed to give all the 

 assistance in his power toward the fulfillment of the design. 



The Uchatius gun is made of so-called steel-bronze. Chilled bronze 

 would be a better name, since Uchatius casts his metal in a chilled, or 

 metal mould, in the same manner, pretty well, as Sir William Palliser 

 produces his famous chilled projectiles. Bronze, as everybody knows, 

 has been a favorite metal with gun-founders from the earliest days, 

 and in the East, especially, magnificent castings of this nature have 

 been produced. About ninety per cent, of co})per and ten of tin is 

 the mixture commonly employed in making ordinary bronze, and eight 

 per cent, of tin is the proportion preferred by Uchatius. The diffi- 

 culty in casting bronze, as those who have any experience know full 

 well, is that of securing homogeneity, soft particles of tin becoming 

 isolated in the mass, and giving rise to tlie defect known as "tin- 

 pitting." Whether we have lost the secret of bronze-casting, or whether 

 in former times they were more skillful at the work, certain it is that 

 founders of the present day are unable to secure so uniform an alloy 

 as formerly. This was very apparent when some eight or ten years 

 ago our own , Government adopted, for a brief time, bronze artillery. 

 The addition of a small percentage of phosphorus did not mend mat- 

 ters, and the highest authorities on the subject were at a loss to sug- 

 gest an effective remedy. Our bronze guns, too, had another defect 

 which could not be overcome. After firino; the bore became afiected, 

 and the weapon, as it was termed, " drooped at the muzzle." These 

 were the two defects indeed that led mainly to the abandonment of 

 the bronze gun in this country, and they are, too, the difficulties which 

 General von Uchatius appears to have overcome. He has got rid of 

 " tin-pitting," and his guns do not " droop at the muzzle." 



Uchatius found that by subjecting the alloy in a liquid form to 

 considerable pressure, he was enabled to secure a perfectly homoge- 

 neous mass, a result which was also furnished, he discovered, when he 

 had gone a step further, if the molten metal was rapidly cooled. Steel- 

 bronze is apparently made much in the same way as the toughened 

 glass of which we have heard so much lately. After being cast in a 

 mould, the alloy is thrust into a reservoir of oil, heated to a high 

 temperature, so that the metal suddenly cools, but only down to a cer- 



