- 
Nov. 2, 1882 | 
NATURE If 
His conclusions were frequently hasty and ill founded. The instrument yielded excellent results: a large 
Lavoisier’s work requires no praise in this place. Priestley’s 
discoveries may be compared to the mingled chaos of 
Gpotomepetae of Anaxagoras; Lavoisier was the Novs, the 
designing intelligence which set them in order, and put 
each in its appointed place. Not without reason, said 
M. Wurtz, “‘La Chimie est une science francaise. Elle 
fut instituée par La voisier d’immortelle mémoire.” 
G, F. RODWELL 
A NEW DREDGING IMPLEMENT 
eG recently visited Oban, in company with a 
friend for the express purpose of obtaining living 
specimens of Pennatulida, and of testing the powers of 
an instrument devised for their capture, I send you a 
note of our experiences which may perhaps be of interest 
to your readers. 
The ordinary dredge, though well adapted to obtaining 
most animals that dwell on the sea-bottom, will clearly not 
do for all, and for no animal form is it less suited than 
for the one we were most anxious to obtain—/wniculina 
quadrangiularis. This giant Pennatulid consists of a 
tall fleshy rod-like axis, three to five feet or more in 
length, and about half an inch in diameter, which bears 
along its sides the individual polypes of the colony, and is 
traversed throughout its entire length by a flexible calci- 
fied stem. /xnzculina lives erect, with the lowermost 
six or eight inches planted as a stalk in the mud of the 
sea-bottom, and the major portion of its length projecting 
up freely into the water. 
For such a form the dredge is clearly very unsuitable. 
Indeed unless the dredge be of very great size it must be 
a pure accident if specimens ever get into it at all. The 
tangles give a better chance, and yet for such a purpose 
they are but a clumsy and haphazard contrivance ; and 
even should they by chance entangle and draw out a 
Funiculina there is a danger, amounting almost to 
certainty that it will drop off again during the process of 
hauling in. 
The instrument we employed was a modification of one 
originally devised by Dr. Malm of Goteborg, and used 
by him with considerable success in dredging for Fumzcz- 
Zina in Gullmarn Fiord, Bohuslain. Dr. Malm’s apparatus, 
of which he has kindly furnished us with a description 
and drawings, consisted of three poles, each nine feet 
long, connected together at their ends, so as to form a 
triangle; the poles were armed with large-sized fish- 
hooks, and the dredging-rope attached at one angle, the 
whole apparatus strongly resembling that used by the 
Philippine Islanders for dredging Luflectella, as de- 
scribed and figured by Moseley (Naturalist on the 
Challenger, p. 407). 
Our instrument, as we first used it, consisted of two 
poles six feet long, connected together in the form of a 
letter A by a cross-bar four feet long. The rope was 
fastened to the apex of the A, and lead weights to the 
lower ends of the side poles. Attached along the cross- 
bar at intervals of six inches were cords four feet in 
length, each armed with five or six fish-hooks and having 
a small lead weight tied to its lower end. The theory of 
the machine was that the whole instrument would be 
dragged along at an angle of about 30° to the sea-bottom, 
steadied by the weights at the ends of the side poles; the 
cross-bar being a foot or so above the ground, and the 
cords armed with fish-hooks trailing behind, with their 
ends kept on the bottom by the small weights attached to 
them. 
The machine was subsequently modified by lengthening 
the cross-bar to nine feet, and attaching the fish-hooks not 
singly, but in threes, like grappling irons. We also con- 
nected the cords together by horizontal strings, in order 
to obviate their tendency to become entangled with one 
another. 
number of specimens of /uniculina guadrangularts were 
obtained, four or five, and in one case as many as seven 
being brought up at a single haul; the specimens were 
also in perfect condition, the injury inflicted by the 
hook being quite imperceptible. Several of the specimens 
were of large size; and one dredged in Ardmucknish 
Bay, and measuring no less than sixty-five inches in 
length, appears to be the largest specimen hitherto ob- 
tained alive from any locality, being a foot longer than 
the largest recorded by Kélliker in his monograph on the 
the Pennatulida. Even this, however, does not appear 
to be the limit of growth, for a dead stem obtained at 
Glaesvae, in the Bergen Fiord, and now in the Hamburg 
Museum, is more than seven feet in length. 
Funiculina quadrangularis is generally considered a 
rare species. It is certainly a very local one; but our 
Oban experience would lead us to infer that where it does 
occur it 1s to be found in quantity, an inference borne out 
by Sir Wyville Thomson, who speaks of passing over a 
“forest of /uniculina” when dredging in Raasay Sound 
during the Porcupine expedition. It appears to have 
been hitherto obtained at Oban only in small numbers, a 
result we believe to be due entirely to the use of instru- 
ments ill-adapted to its capture. 
Four or five specimens of Pennatula phosphorea were 
obtained with the same instrument, which further proved 
its utility by bringing up several fine specimens of 
Hydrozoa. The instrument in its present form is clearly 
capable of improvement ; still the results of a first trial 
have been so good, that we may possibly be rendering a 
service to other naturalists by making them known through 
your columns. A. MILNES MARSHALL 
Cwens College, October 27 
WIRE GUNS 
pe will no doubt surprise many of our readers to be told 
that after nearly a quarter of a century of experiment 
and investigation, and the expenditure of millions upon 
millions of money, the nation is so imperfectly armed 
that we are again entering upon a period of reconstruction 
of our heavy ordnance, the outcome of which it is not 
easy to foresee. From the old cast-iron 68 pounder, 
weighing from 4 to 5 tons, we have arrived at the 80 ton 
gun of Woolwich, but only to learn that such guns are 
already obsolete, and must give place to others of a new 
type developing greater power with less weight. Till 
very recently we have been constantly told by the highest 
authorities in this department of the Government that the 
English guns were the finest, the strongest, and the most 
powerful in the world, and it is no doubt somewhat 
startling to learn that all this has been a delusion. 
It is not our intention to dwell upon the causes of this, 
nor to inquire whether it has been due to departmental 
conservatism or to the uncertainty incidental to the pro- 
gress of an art carried on by a tentative method, and 
modified from time to time by new discoveries in physical 
science. Our purpose is rather to give some information 
about a system of gun making, which is at last obtaining 
the attention of gunmakers, we allude to what is termed 
the wire system of construction. 
Twenty-seven years ago this system was brought before 
the then existing Ordnance Committee by the writer 
who has from that time to this persistently advocated its 
merits, proving, not only by the construction of guns but 
also by mathematical analysis, its great advantage over 
other systems ; but it is only within the last two or three 
years that it has been regarded with tolerance by practical 
gun makers. 
In France the system has been applied under the 
superintendence of Capt. Schultz, of the Ecole Poly- 
technique, and in this country Sir Wm. Armstrong and 
Co. have made one or two guns, the latest and largest of 
