86 LETTEES OF BEKZELIUS 



XVIII 



Schonbein to Berzelius 



DEAR SIR, 



I hope you will forgive me for taking the 

 liberty of introducing to you with these lines two 

 young men from Bale, Herr Merian 1 and Herr 

 Landerer, 2 and of commending them to your favour- 

 able notice. They are going to travel in your 

 beautiful country chiefly for artistic purposes. 



You will perhaps be interested if I take this 

 occasion of informing you that I have just recently 

 performed numerous experiments with my guncotton 

 both with small firearms and with large guns, and 

 I have obtained the most satisfactory results. For 

 instance I sent a shell weighing 15 Ibs. (7J kgs.) 

 1670 French feet from a mortar with one ounce 

 of my guncotton ; and with half a drachm (1*7 grms.) 

 a gun sent a bullet weighing three-quarters of an 

 ounce several inches deep into wood at a distance 

 of 500 feet. The experiments which I have hitherto 

 made have shown that one pound of guncotton 

 produces at the very least as much effect as two 

 pounds of the best gunpowder. I have several times 

 used my guncotton for blasting purposes in a tunnel 3 



1 Eduard Merian-Bischoff, born at Bale in 1824, died in 1859. 



2 He became a painter ; he was murdered at Barbizon near 

 Paris on September 6th, 1893. 



3 The tunnel of the Baden railway near Istein. 



