Aug. 25, 1870] 
NATURE 
339 
THE SCIENCE OF WAR 
I. 
CAPTAIN MONCRIEFF’S HYDRO-PNEUMATIC GUN- 
CARRIAGE FOR SEA SERVICE 
ots apology is needed for venturing to trouble the 
quiet of NATURE with an account of military engines. | 
The desolation that war is now spreading over some of 
Nature’s fairest scenes, and the waste caused thereby of her 
bounteous annual gifts, may account for these jottings, 
which have, perhaps, strangely found their way into her 
note-book ; such topics have been suddenly and violently 
forced of late upon her attention. 
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But a further and more substantial reason for finding a 
place for a subject of this kind within NATURE’S domain is 
that the action of Nature’s forces is in some ways best 
displayed in warlike engines. In them we use, examine, 
} and experiment with force in sudden and violent action. To 
produce and also to control and direct the instantaneously 
created power of explosives has taxed the ingenuity, and 
also enlarged the knowledge of both the chemist and the 
mechanician. But for the necessities of war we should 
know little of Nature’s forces in this aspect. The arts cf 
peace only in a very limited form make use of explosive 
agents. The wonderful progress made of late years in 
military engines—a progress whose rapidity surpasses the 
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advances of any mechanical inventions for otherpurposes— | land defence was tried with an instantaneous success that 
has called an amount of attention to those forces and 
agents which the modern artillerist employs, that has not 
failed to bring out many special facts in relation to them. 
Nature’s territories are everywhere so rich that he who 
diligently ploughs any corner, however remote, seldom 
fails to be rewarded, not only by the crop which he seeks to 
cultivate, but also by some unsuspected fragments of truth 
which his plough-share has, as it were, accidentally turned 
up. For instance, some of the most remarkable examples 
of conservation of energy are to be found in the action and 
effects of the mighty projectiles of modern times. 
The inventions of the gentleman whose name stands at 
the head of this paper, afford several important illustra- 
tions of the foregoing remarks. It is not more than two 
years since his Protected Barbette Gun-Carriage for 
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filled the public with astonishment—an exceedingly rare 
occurrence in inventions so entirely novelin their principles. 
Having previously existed only in the inventor’s mind 
and in small models, when applied to a 7-ton gun (a 
monster unknown so recently as the Crimean war), it was 
found to work with perfect exactness and to realise all 
that had been promised for it. It may be well to recall 
briefly to the reader’s mind what this carriage effected, and 
the means by which it acted, as the new carriage is 
designed to effect a somewhat similar object, though by a 
wholly different agency, 
The purpose which the Protected Barbette Carriage 
accomplishes is the utilisation of the recoil. This force, 
which in modern heavy ordnance is a very consider- 
able one, was previously known only as a destructive 
