MECHANICAL AND USEFUL ARTS. 51 



hundredweight ! We are unable to say what range was attained, 

 - but, judging from the initial velocity of the shot and its time of 

 flight, it must have been enormously great, and altogether unpre- 

 cedented. The gun is made of the Mersey puddled steel by Mr. 

 Clay, and stood the immense strain brought upon it with perfect 

 success, showing no sign of weakness anywhere. The heaviest rifled 

 cannon ever made prior to this of Mr. Thomas's, is the Whitworth 

 SO-pounder ; but the weight of this is but 4^ tons, nearly a third less 

 than that of the new weapon. The heaviest projectile ever before 

 fired from a rifled cannon is Sir William Armstrong's 1001b. shot 

 from a cannon of considerably less than 4 tons. It will be seen, 

 therefore, that another great advance has been made in the art of 

 gun construction, and one which will bear seriously upon the much- 

 agitated question of iron-cased ships. — Mechanics^ Magazine. 



THE WHITWORTH RIFLE. 



The Whitworth Rifle has now afforded such ample proofs of its 

 superiority to the Enfield arm, that the single adverse consideration of 

 its cost cannot be allowed to operate much longer against its intro- 

 duction. The costliness of the Armstrong gun, extreme as it was 

 and is, proved no insuperable obstacle to its adoption ; nor can that 

 of the new rifle be allowed to prevail against it. When Colonel 

 Eardlev-Wilmot recently reminded Sir William Armstrong (at the 

 Institution of Civil Engineers) that it was unfair to compare the cost 

 of the new rifled cannon with the cost of a brass gun, because after 

 the latter became unserviceable as a gun it was almost as valuable 

 as ever to sell as old brass, Sir William replied that he trusted 

 his guns would prove " almost everlasting. " Mr. Whitworth may 

 surely employ the same argument, and with even greater reason. It 

 is fallacious to compare the cost of one of his rifles with that of an 

 ordinary Enfield. Mr. Whitworth uses the best material that can 

 be obtained — material that costs no less than 60£. per ton, and which 

 is very hard and tough and difficult to work, but which is also cor- 

 respondingly strong and durable. That it is so there can be no 

 doubt. In illustration of its great strength, Mr. Whitworth put into 

 a rifle barrel one inch in diameter at the breech, with a bore of 

 •49 inch, a leaden plug eighteen inches long, as tightly as it could 

 be driven home upon the charge. It was fired with an ordinary 

 charge of powder, and the leaden plug being expanded by the explo- 

 sion remained in the barrel, the gases generated by the gunpowder 

 all passing out through the touchhole. The same experiment was re- 

 peated four times with the same result. It is evident, therefore, 

 that gunpowder cannot burst the Whitworth rifle. With such 

 strength great durability must of necessity co-exist, unless the quick 

 turn of the rifling should tend to its rapid deterioration. But this is 

 not the case ; Mr. Longridge's elaborate investigations having proved 

 that the amount of the force expended upon the rifling of the Whit- 

 worth rifle scarcely exceeds two per cent, of the total force of the 

 powder. 



Perhaps the most remarkable testimony which has been borne to 

 u 2 



