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108 
The ten years which have elapsed since 1855 have wit- 
nessed changes in the character of sea-coast and naval artil- 
lery, and an increase in the calibres and weight of their pro- 
jectiles, which no one at that date would have anticipated ; 
hence some doubt may be entertained whether our casemated 
masonry works are adequate to contend with iron-clad ves- 
sels armed with the modern artillery. This is a question 
which it remains for experiment or experience to decide. It 
has, as yet, not been demonstrated that a masonry fort, con- 
structed as our more recent works are, will not, armed with 
the powerful guns now being introduced, endure the contest 
quite as long as its iron-clad antagonist can protract it. 
In this connection it is due to General Totten to say, that 
he has himself been ever the most strenuous advocate of 
“big guns,” the most urgent instigator of their production. 
The writer well remembers when, seated with him on the 
piazza of the officers’ quarters at Fort Jackson, our ey® 
resting on the mighty stream flowing past us, upon the de- 
fence of which our thoughts and conversation had been turn- 
ing, he exclaimed, “We must have a twenty-inch gun.” 
The idea was novel to me at that time, and I exhibited 
some surprise. He went on to say, that, thoroughly to pre 
. Vent the passage or attempted passage of an armed steam 
ship, there must be not only danger, but almost a certainty 
of destruction. “Let us have guns such that (to use his ow? 
phrase) ‘every shot shall be a bird’” The invention of at 
mored ships, not then foreseen, has increased the necessity 
of having such guns as he, on other grounds, so strongly ad- 
vocated. He expressed the greatest confidence that a gu" 
of the dimensions he named would yet be made and intr 
duced into our batteries, and added the interesting statement, 
that in his earlier days he had found much difficulty in im- 
Pressing upon the members of boards on which he bad 
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