1 4 8 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



on shipboard ; as a defensive weapon, upon the wall of a besieged 

 town. This iron barrel was firmly fastened down upon a hori- 

 zontal bed or to a fixed framework of timber. The balls shot 

 from it were of stone. Since there was no provision for aiming, 

 it can be readily conceived that the enemy might be equally safe 

 or unsafe at a variety of points in front of such an ostensible 

 engine of destruction. 



Small cannon, intended for transportation on land, were un- 

 doubtedly constructed early in the fourteenth century. They 

 were used by the English, possibly as early as 1327, in battle with 

 the Scotch, and certainly against the French in 1346, at the battle 



of Cre'cy. There is noth- 

 fll 



' phoUAN&' xE 



"Mows MEG" CAITNON AT EDINBURGH. 

 Caliber, twenty inches. Made in 1486 at Mons, Brittany. 

 The arrangement of hoops around staves is shown 

 at the part injured by its bursting in 1682. 



on 



this occasion any one was 

 killed or wounded by a 

 cannon. The sole func- 

 tion was that of fright- 

 ening the enemy. Nor 

 have we any record of 

 the method of support- 

 ing or transporting such 



field artillery. It was rather as heavy artillery that cannon found 

 their chief earlier use, and they were soon made of such size as to 

 be quite comparable in this respect with modern guns. One of 

 these bombards, made in Belgium in 1382, weighs about sixteen 

 tons, is more than eleven feet long, and its caliber is about two 

 feet. It is still kept on exhibition in the city of Ghent. Another 

 is the " Mons Meg," made in 1486 at Mons in Brittany. It was 

 captured by the Scotch, and is now kept at Edinburgh. 



A gun somewhat similar in construction to that in Ghent was 

 dug up about forty years ago from the bed of a river in Bengal, 

 and now stands on exhibition in the city of Moorshedabad. It 

 was made of wrought iron, was more than twelve feet in length, 

 and about seventeen inches in caliber. That the forging of iron 

 on so large a scale was accomplished at such a time and in such a 

 place indicates a marked degree of progress in metallurgy in the 

 far East, and adds force to the thought that cannon may have 

 been in use in Asia long before they were ever employed in 

 Europe. 



During the siege of Constantinople, in the fifteenth century, 

 according to Gibbon, the Turks employed cannon with which 

 stone balls, each six hundred pounds in weight, were projected, 

 and the walls of the city were thus breached. Von Moltke men- 

 tions such a gun at the same place, twenty-eight inches in diam- 

 eter at the muzzle, with which a ball more than fifteen hundred 

 pounds in weight was projected by a charge of one hundred 



