September 4, 1890] 



NATURE 



443 



journals of renown, misled by such legendary accounts, chiefly 

 emanating from France, referred to the absence of noise and 

 smoke in battles as greatly enhancing the demands for skill and 

 courage, and as surrounding a fight with mystery. The absence 

 of recoil when a rifle was fired with smokeless powder was 

 another of the marvels reported to attend the use of these new 

 agents of warfare. It need scarcely be said that a closer ac- 

 quaintance with them has dispelled the credit given to such of 

 the accounts of their supposed qualities as were mythical, and a 

 belief in which could only be ascribable to a phenomenal com- 

 bination of credulity with ignorance of the most elementary 

 scientific knowledge. 



The extensive use which has been made in Germany of smoke- 

 less or nearly smokeless powder in one or two special military 

 displays has, however, afforded interesting indications of the 

 actual change which is likely to be wrought in the conditions 

 under which engagements on land will be fought in the future, 

 provided these new explosives thoroughly establish and maintain 

 their position as safe and reliable propelling agents. Although 

 the powder adopted in Germany is not actually smokeless, the 

 almost transparent film of smoke produced by independent rifle- 

 firing with it is not visible at a distance of about 300yards ; at shorter 

 distances it presents the appearance of a puff from a cigar. The 

 most rapid salvo- firing by a large number of men does not have 

 the effect of obscuring them from distant observers. When 

 machine-guns and field-artillery are fired with the almost ab- 

 solutely smokeless powder which we are employing, their posi- 

 tion is not readily revealed to distant observers by the momentary 

 vivid flash of flame and slight cloud of dust produced. 



There now appears little doubt that in future warfare belli- 

 gerents on both sides will alike be users of these new powders ; 

 the tscreening or obscuring effect of smoke will therefore be 

 practically absent during engagements between contending 

 forces, and while, on the one hand, the very important protection 

 of smoke, and its sometimes equally important assistance in 

 manoeuvres, will thus be abolished, both combatants will, on 

 the other hand, secure the advantages of accuracy of shooting 

 and of the use of individual fire, through the medium of cover, 

 with comparative immunity from detection. Such results as 

 these cannot fail to affect, more or less radically, the principles 

 and conditions under which battles have hitherto been fought. 

 With respect to the naval service, it is especially for the quick- 

 firing guns, so important for defensive purposes, that a smokeless 

 powder has been anxiously looked for ; by the adoption of such 

 a powder as has during the past year been elaborated for our 

 artillery, should experience establish its reliability under all 

 Service conditions and its power to fulfil all reasonable require- 

 ments in regard to stability, these guns will not only be used by 

 our ships under conditions most favourable to their efficiency, 

 but their power will also be very importantly increased. 



The ready and safe attainment of very high velocities of pro- 

 jection through the agency of these new varieties of explosive 

 agents, employed in guns of suitable construction, would appear 

 at first sight to promise a very important advance in the power 

 of artillery ; the practical difficulties attending the utilization of 

 these results are, however, sufficiently formidable to place, at 

 any rate at present, comparatively narrow limits upon our 

 powers of availing ourselves of the advantages in ballistics which 

 they may present. The strength of the gun-carriages and the 

 character of the arrangements used for absorbing the force of 

 recoil of the gun, need considerable modifications, not easy of 

 application in some instances ; greater strength and perfection of 

 manufacture are imperative in the case of the hollow projectiles 

 or shells to be used with charges of a propelling agent by the 

 firing of which in the gun they may be submitted to compara- 

 tively very severe concussions ; the increased friction to which 

 portions of the explosive contents of the shell are exposed by 

 the more violent setting back of the mass may increase the pos- 

 sibility of their accidental ignition before the shell has been pro- 

 jected from the gun ; the increase of concussion to which the 

 fuze in the shell is exposed may give rise to a similar risk con- 

 sequent upon an increased liability to a failure of the mechanical 

 devices which are applied to prevent the igniting arrangement, 

 designed to come into operation only upon the impact or graze 

 of the projected shells, from being set into action prematurely 

 by the shock of the discharge ; lastly, the circumstance that the 

 rate of burning of the time-fuze which determines the efficiency 

 of a projected shrapnel shell is materially altered by an increase 

 in the velocity of flight of the shell, also presents a source of 

 difficulty. 



NO. 1088. VOL. 42] 



The fallibility of even the most single forms of fuze, manu- 

 factured in very large numbers, although it may be remote, must 

 always engender a feeling of insecurity, when shells are em- 

 ployed containing an explosive agent of the class which, in 

 recent years, it has been sought, by every resource of ino;enuity, 

 combined with intimate knowledge of the properties of these 

 explosives, to apply as substitutes for gunpowder in shells, on 

 account of their comparatively great destructive power. 



One of the first uses, for purposes of warfare, to which it was 

 attempted to apply gun-cotton, was as a charge for shells. But 

 even when this was highly-compressed, and accurately fitted the 

 shell-chamber, with the intervention only of a soft packing 

 between the surfaces of explosive and of metal, to guard against 

 friction between the two upon the shock of the discharge, no 

 security was attainable against the ignition of the comparatively 

 sensitive explosive by friction established within its mass at the 

 moment when the shell is first set in motion. By the premature 

 explosion of a shell charged with gunpowder, no important 

 injury is inflicted upon the gun, but a similar accidental ignition 

 of a gun-cotton charge must almost inevitably burst the arm. 

 The earlier attempts to apply gun-cotton as a bursting-charge 

 for shells were several times attended by very disastrous 

 accidents of this kind ; but the fact, afterwards discovered, 

 that wet compressed gun-cotton, even when containing sufficient 

 water to render it quite uninflammable, can be detonated through 

 the agency of a sufficiently powerful charge of fulminate of 

 mercury, or of a small quantity of dry gun-cotton embedded 

 within it, has led to the perfectly safe application of gun-cotton 

 in shells, provided the fuze, through the agency of which the 

 initiative detonating agent in the shell comes into operation, is 

 secure against any liability to premature ignition when the gun 

 is fired. Many successful experiments have been made with 

 shells thus charged with wet gun-cotton, which is now recognized 

 as a formidable destructive agent applicable in shells with much 

 less risk of casualty than attends the use of many other of the 

 violent explosive bodies which it has become fashionable, in pro- 

 fessional parlance, to designate as "high explosives." 



Many devices and arrangements, more or less ingenious and 

 complicated, have been schemed, especially in the United States, 

 for applying preparations of the very sensitive liquid, nitro- 

 glycerine, such as dynamite and blasting-gelatine, as charges for 

 shells. Some of these consist in subdividing the charge by more 

 or less elaborate methods ; in others the shell is also lined with 

 some soft elastic packing-material, and paddings of similar mate- 

 rial are applied in the head and the base of the shell-chamber, 

 with the object of reducing the friction and concussion to which 

 the explosive is exposed when the projectile is first set in motion. 

 Such arrangements obviously reduce the space available for the 

 charge in the shell, and the best of them fail to render these ex- 

 plosives as safe to employ as wet gun-cotton. In order to avoid 

 exposing shells loaded with such explosives to the concussion 

 produced when propelling them by a powder-charge, compressed 

 air has been applied as the propelling agent, and guns of special 

 construction and very large dimensions, from which shells con- 

 taining as much as 500 lbs. of gun-cotton or dynamite are pro- 

 jected through the agency of compressed air, have recently 

 been elaborated in the United States, where great expectations 

 are entertained of the value, for war-purposes, of these so-called 

 pneumatic guns. 



A highly ingenious device for utilizing a class of very powerful 

 explosives in shells, without any risk of accident to the gun, was 

 not long since brought forward by Mr. Griisen, the well-known 

 armour-plate and projectile manufacturer of Magdeburg. It 

 consisted of a thoroughly efficient arrangement for applying the 

 fact, first demonstrated by Dr. Sprengel, that mixtures of nitric 

 acid of high specific gravity with solid or liquid hydrocarbons, 

 or with the nitro-compounds of these, are susceptible of detona- 

 tion, with development of very high energy. The two agents, 

 of themselves non-explosive — nitric acid and the hydrocarbon, 

 or its nitro-product — are separately confined in the shell ; when 

 it is first set in motion by the firing of the gun, the fracture of 

 the receptacle containing the liquid nitric acid is determined by 

 a very sinple device ; the two substances are then free to come 

 into contact, and their very rapid mixture is promoted by the 

 rotation of the shell, so that, almost by the time that it is pro- 

 jected from the gun, its contents, at first quite harmless, have 

 become converted into a powerfully explosive mixture, ready to 

 come into operation through the action of the fuze. Although 

 safety appears assured by this system, the comparatively com- 

 plicated nature of the contrivance, and the loss of space in the 



