MISCELLANEOUS HINTS. 395 



force of the powder, the barrel will be bursted without fail near 

 its mouth; and the same accident will more readily occur if the 

 mouth of the piece be sunk a few inches below the surface of 

 the water, as the resistance offered by this fluid to the passage 

 of the load under such circumstances is far more powerful than 

 that offered by the thin sides of the barrel, and the weaker power 

 must necessarily give way to the more strong. 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 hap- 

 pened to an acquaintance of ours, some years since, confirms us 

 in the opinion. 



A gun may also burst from bad loading ; we don't mean en- 

 tirely from overloading, but sometimes from the want of proper 

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

 moving of the Avad 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 condensation and accumulation of 

 the elastic fluid behind the object, offering a stout resistance or 

 rather sudden check 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 he incorrect. 



Commodore Stockton, in his paper containing experiments 

 on ordnance, instituted by permission of the Navy Department, 

 and lately read before the American Philosophical Society, 

 opposes this long-received doctrine of explosion, and proves 

 very conclusively, in some description of large guns^ at least, that 

 they invariably burst with a smaller charge when the ball was 

 nearer the powder, than when it was at a distance ; and, also, 

 that the bursting took place with the shot at the shortest dis- 

 tance 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 case in large guns of equal caliber and size 

 throughout their ivhole extent, but they prove nothing, in our 



