EXPLOSIVES: THEIR MANUFACTURE AND USE. 



By W. CULLEN. 



(Evening Discourse delivered in the Tozvn Hall, Bloemfontcin, 

 on Thursday, Sept. 30, 1909: Illustrated by 44 lantern 

 slides.) 



Your Excellency, ladies and gentlemen : 



Before proceeding with my lecture to-night I hope you will 

 pardon me if I say just one word about the Association under 

 whose auspices we meet. Its aims are well stated by its official 

 designation, the South African Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science, and I need hardly remind you that it is 

 modelled on its more famous prototype, the British Associa- 

 tion, which is holding its annual meeting at Winnipeg this 

 year. Long before the cjuestion of a political union of the 

 various South African States had assumed a coherent form, 

 the members of our Association had recognised that science 

 knew no geographical or racial boundaries, and that its ad- 

 vancement was rather retarded than otherwise by their exist- 

 ence. In turn, all the British South African Colonies, except- 

 ing" the Orange Free State, have been visited, and I would like 

 to say on behalf of my visiting colleagues how pleased we are 

 to be here at last, and how much we appreciate the hospitality 

 which has been so lavishly showered upon us. I hardly hope 

 that our visit will altogether compensate you for the loss of the 

 Capital, but under the new era which will soon be officially 

 inaugurated we trust that this historic town and your virile 

 community will receive a measure of prosperity, commensurate 

 with the great sacrifices which have been made. 



What South Africa wants to-day is rest — political and in- 

 dustrial — such rest as will enable us to tackle those multifarious 

 scientific problems upon which the prosperity of the whole 

 country so much depends — in the true spirit of enquiry — un- 

 hampered by considerations of expediency, and onlv considered 

 from the point of view of the good of the whole. 



I owe you an apology for the choice of a subject with which 

 most of you must be entirely unfamiliar, but my excuse is 

 that the subject of explosives is the one that I know best. But 

 even after 20 years' acquaintance I know just sufficient to 

 realise that I know so very little after all. To-night I propose 

 only to tell you what I think I know. After all, however, ex- 

 plosives have a good deal to do with the material prosperity 

 of your State. Without them you will have no mining industry 

 at all, and very possibly you would still have been without an 

 efficient railway service. If then they are essential to you — 

 for remember all your coal is won by their means — how much 

 more so must they be to the Witwatersrand, where every month 

 some 1,600 tons are consumed in the mining' for gold, 



