420 LEWIS'S AMERICAN SPORTSMAN. 



give way to the stronger. That a gun will burst very readily if the 

 muzzle be sunk a few inches under the water, we have not the least 

 doubt ; and an accident which happened to an acquaintance of ours, 

 some years since, confirms us in the opinion. 



A fowling-piece may also burst from bad loading; we do not 

 mean entirely from overcharging, but sometimes from the want of 

 proper precaution in ramming down the shot on the powder, or the 

 moving of the wad of one barrel by the jar communicated to it by 

 the explosion of the other. Bursting from this latter cause is 

 occasioned by the sudden accumulation and increased expansion 

 of the elastic fluid behind the object offering the resistance, or rather 

 is the consequence of the sudden check given to its steady exit 

 from the barrel. 



A ball thus impacted in the barrel of a small gun, musket, or 

 rifle, will be most likely to burst the piece, if fired ; such, at least, 

 is the generally-received opinion. 



This belief, however, like many other vulgar errors that have 

 descended by repetition from one to another without any detail of 

 experiments entered into necessary to establish the facts upon a 

 certain and indisputable basis, may not be altogether correct. 



Commodore Stockton, in his paper containing experiments on 

 ordnance instituted by permission of the Navy Department, and 

 la-tely read before the American Philosophical Society, opposes 

 this long-received doctrine of explosion, and proves very conclu- 

 sively, in some description of large guns at least, that they in- 

 variably burst with a smaller charge when the ball was nearer the 

 powder than when it was at a distance ; and, also, that the burst- 

 ing took place with the shot at the shortest distance from the 

 powder, after sustaining the same charges at a longer distance. 



These experiments and their results certainly go to prove that 

 such is the fact in large guns of equal calibre and size throughout 

 their whole extent ; but they prove nothing, in our judgment, in 

 the case of small fire-arms of unequal strength and weight of 

 metal. 

 . Commodore Stockton also shows most conclusively thai the 



