42 Meeting of the British Association. [Oct., 
was 7° 7’; the projectiles used being, 1, the Whitworth steel-shot 
with a flat head ; 2, a hemispherical-headed shot ; 3, a shot with a 
head of the form advocated by Major Palliser. While in the first 
case the shot which struck close to the spot aimed at, in the second 
case it struck considerably, and in the third very much above that 
point. Mr. Whitworth, however, went rather out of his way, and 
certainly beyond the scope of his paper, to attack the material as 
well as the form of the chilled-iron shot. His objections to that pro- 
jectile were: 1, that when fired at a considerable angle against an 
armour-plate its form causes it to glance off, while owing to the 
brittleness of the metal of which it is composed it breaks up; 2, that 
the consequent weakness of the metal necessitates a greater thick- 
ness of the sides and reduces its internal capacity as a shell. 
In the discussion which followed, Mr. Bramwell defended the 
Palliser shell, and on the point of economy alone placed it far above 
a steelone. A steel shot he estimated to cost five times as much as 
one on the principle of Major Palliser. Its efficiency as a projectile 
he illustrated by the observation that a fragment of a steel shell after 
being fired against an armour-plate would be found to be quite hot, 
while in the case of one of chilled-iron no appreciable heat was 
developed. 
In supporting Mr. Whitworth’s claims for the superiority of a 
flat-headed shot in penetrating water, Mr. Hawksley argued, that 
on the principle of a flat stone selected by boys in playing “ duck 
and drake,” it seemed more probable that a projectile with a conical 
head would be deflected upwards from the surface of the water—in 
fact it would tend to ricochet. The smaller the angle between the 
direction of the shot and the surface of the water, the greater would 
be this tendency. It seemed to be also admitted by more than one 
speaker, that although a conical-headed shot might be superior to 
one with a flat head when striking at right angles, it was decidedly 
inferior when the angle was oblique. 
Mr. Mallet called the attention of the meeting to some experi- 
ments conducted by the Russian General, Mayevski, which seem to 
show that the ogival-headed projectile is superior to the flat-headed, 
both for direct and oblique penetration. When a flat-headed shot 
strikes obliquely, it has a tendency to slew round and fly off back- 
wards. On the contrary, while the ogival-headed shot also has a 
tendency to slew round, the result is to bury the point in the face of 
the armour, whereupon the shot proceeds to force its way into the 
plate almost the same as if it had been fired at right angles. A 
certain amount of power is lost even in the case of the ogive, but 
that which remains is exercised usefully. 
Considering the national importance of the manufacture of iron 
and steel, the great improvements which have been lately intro- 
duced into it, and the necessity of still further reducing the con- 
