182 Bibliography. 
. In the twenty-four pounder gun, new cannon powder should give, 
with a charge of one-fourth the weight of the ball, an initial velocity of 
not less than sixteen hundred feet, to a ball of medium size and windage. 
» The initial velocity of the musket ball, of 0°05 in windage, with a 
charge of one hundred and twenty grains, should be 
With new musket powder not less than 1,500 feet. 
ac % rifle so 19 3 1,600 “ce 
“|. fine-sporting: St). 2 -v:* & 1,800 “ 
_ The common eprouvettes are of no value as instruments for de- 
termining the relative force of different kinds of gunpowder. 
The proportion used in making our best powder, 76.14.10, and the 
English 75.15.10, appear to be favorable to the strength of powder. 
The best mode of manufacture is in what is called the cylinder mills 
under heavy rollers, and this process alone is considered capable of 
making good sporting powder. . The English have employed this process 
for fifty years, but the French still use the old method, by stamping or 
pounding. The “ gravimetric density’? should not be less than 850 
nor more than 920.. The charge for cannon for all ordinary purposes 
should be one-fourth. No purpose, even breaching a battery, requires 
more than one-third the weight of the ball. For small arms the follow- 
ing charges are proposed: for the percussion musket, 110 grains; the 
percussion rifle, 75 grains; the percussion pistol, 30 grains of rifle 
powder. It is proposed that musket and rifle balls should be made by 
compression, instead of casting as at present. The body of the volume 
is occupied by extended tables, containing the full detail of the experi 
ments, properly classified. 
8. Rural Economy in its relations with Chemistry, Physics, and 
Meteorology ; or Chemistry applied to Agriculture ; by J. B. Boussin- 
GAULT. Translated, with an introduction and notes, by Georce Law, 
Agriculturist. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 200 Broadway. 12mo, 
- 507.—Boussingault’s labors have been known heretofore, to English 
readers, chiefly, if not only, by the frequent reference made to them 
by the popular chemical. and. agricultural writers of the day. . They 
have been a mine of facts to the builders of theories, and have furnished 
some inferences which probably the author never dreamt of. No man 
has made more, or more extensive practical experiments in agriculture 
than Boussingault, and no results are more reliable than-his. _ It is with 
much pleasure that we find before us a translation of his collected 
papers, a series much needed for the benefit of agricultural readers. 
The two stout volumes of the original French are here embodied into 
one, partly by the use of a smaller type and closer and larger pages 
~ 
