THE APPLICATIONS .OF EXPLOSIVES. 



445 



cemented in the cavity with carnaiiba wax, for shell filled in the 

 former manner, but nnfused, were repeatedly fired, in 1887 and 

 1888, at Newport, R. I., from S-l-pounder Dahlgren howitzers and 



Sims-Dudley Pneumatic Gux, limbered up. 

 (Courtesy of the Scientific American.) 



20-pounder muzzle-loading rifles with service charges of powder, 

 and though they were fired point blank into the masonry escarp- 

 ment of the old fort on Rose Island, but fifty yards distant from 

 the muzzle, so that the shells were broken up or distorted and the 

 gun cotton in them subjected to a powerful compression, yet not 

 only was there no premature explosion, but none of the shell 



Sims- Dudley Pneumatic Gun, in Battery. 

 (Courtesy of the Scientific American.) 



exploded by impact. About the same time fused shell contain- 

 ing cemented gun cotton were fired in Germany, with an initial 

 velocity of fourteen hundred feet per second, and they passed com- 



