Oct. 21, 1836] 
is an absolute fact that the projectiles which fit the guns 
of 1866 can be fired from the guns of to-day, and wice 
versé. None of the Abouchoff guns have ever burst or 
injured a single man! The Committee on the Co//ing- 
wood accident ascribe the disaster in part to the unequal 
composition of the material. Admiral Kolokolzoff pro- 
vides against the possibility of this by using nothing but 
crucible steel. His casting-house contains about 2000 
crucibles ; each holds a small charge of steel, the composi- 
tion of which is determined with the utmost care and 
exactness. The consequence is that his material is abso- 
lutely uniform, and, in addition, he is the only man that 
has adopted Whitworth’s method of fluid compression. 
He does not use crucible steel because he has no other 
means of casting: he has Bessemer converters and 
Siemens-Martin furnaces; but for the highest-class 
work he prefers the crucible metal, because of its 
necessary uniformity when prepared with proper care. 
Had we had a man of the Admiral’s capacity per- 
manently at the head of our Gun Factory, had we sub- 
sidised any important steel-works as liberally as the 
Elswick firm has been assisted, we could also, twenty 
years ago, have had ingots of 40 tons weight of crucible 
steel of any quality desired. The Abouchoff works began 
to make 12-inch guns about the same time as we did, but 
their gun of the same proportions as those of the Cod/ing- 
wood weighs 503 tons against the 43 tons of our dis- 
credited weapon. Our amended guns will weigh the 
same as the Russian. How is this to be accounted for, 
if we be, as Colonel Maitland asserts, far ahead of our 
neighbours in the science of gunnery ? 
Let us now contrast the Russian record with the history 
of our own guns. Sir William Armstrong introduced 
what he, in his address to his shareholders, calls, with 
some pride, his own gun—our first breech-loader. It was 
a built-up gun, upon the principles advocated by Mr. 
Mallet in his work on artillery in 1856, and the breech 
mechanism was a close imitation of that of the guns on 
board the Chinese junk which was moored off Essex 
Street during the Exhibition of 1851. At that time the 
Broadwell ring, or, rather, gas-check, such as we know it 
applied to muzzle-loaders, had been used at Woolwich, 
but had probably been forgotten ; at least it was not 
applied to the Armstrong breech mechanism, which 
failed from its avowed danger when applied to the 
larger calibres of guns. We then gave up breech- 
loading and reverted to muzzle-loading, and finally 
we have come back to breech-loading, and adopted 
steel some twenty-five years after the Russians had 
completely solved whatever difficulties there may have 
been in the process of using it. In muzzle-loaders we 
revert to the gas-check, and so we have at least three 
classes of projectiles in use instead of one only. How is 
it that we have got into all this confusion? The only 
possible answer is that it is caused by our absurd system 
of having no permanent responsible scientifically educated 
officer at the head of each department of the Arsenal. 
The newly appointed chief knows nothing of what his 
predecessor did or what his experiences had been, for 
experience cannot be readily communicated from one man 
to another; he is, in fact, not a chief, but, for more 
than half his time, the slave of his permanent sub- 
ordinates. 
NATURE 
391 
HAINAN AND ITS PEOPLE 
Ling-Nam, or Interior Views of Southern China, in- 
cluding Explorations in the hitherto untraversed Island 
of Hainan. By B.C. Henry, A.M. (London: S. W. 
Partridge and Co., 1886.) 
PORTIONS of this book have already appeared from 
time to time in the two magazines in the English 
language published in China, the Chizza Review and the 
Chinese Recorder, but they well deserved the more per- 
manent book form, for the author, like many other mis- 
sionaries, has travelled widely in parts of China which 
are rarely visited by Europeans. Mr. Henry, too, writes 
from a full mind; he has made the most of his great 
opportunities, and accordingly he has contributed here a 
very real and solid addition to our knowledge of the 
Middle Kingdom. In reading it we are constantly re- 
minded of a work written a good many years ago by 
another missionary, which has now almost attained the 
dignity of a classic, viz. Dr. Williamson’s “Journeys in 
North China”; both are of the same useful, substantial 
kind, and for a long time to come both will have to be 
referred to for information in regard to the respective 
districts with which they deal. Mr. Henry refers solely 
to Southern China, as the name Zzzg-Nam (“ South of 
the Ridge”) implies, and to the Kwangtung or Canton 
province. He describes various journeys through the 
central and northern parts of this large and populous 
province, along the principal streams. As we read o 
town after town with populations of 100,000 and over, we 
begin to understand how populous China is. But then, 
with the exception of the valley of the Yangtsze, the two 
great southern provinces of Kwangtung and Kwangsi are 
the most thickly peopled of the whole empire. Even 
those who have travelled in parts of the Canton province 
will be surprised to learn from Mr. Henry of the mag- 
nificent scenery of the north and north-west. The idea 
of the passing traveller in and around Canton and 
the neighbouring cities is that the whole province is 
a vast plain in a high state of cultivation; but in 
the upper courses of the tributaries of the West River 
Mr, Henry found scenes worthy of the wildest moun- 
tain regions. Here also, on the borders of Hunan, 
he came in contact with one of those tribes which 
are found like scattered fragments over the whole of 
China south of the Yangtsze—amongst, but not of, the 
Chinese, with their own communities living generally in 
fastnesses amongst the mountains, preserving in a great 
measure their ancient habits, and but slightly contam- 
inated by the proximity of their Chinese conquerors. 
Their name is legion, and they are sure to furnish 
abundance of work for ethnologists in the future. In the 
present instance the people are called the Iu, and are 
described by Mr. Henry as lower in stature than the 
Chinese, with a similar complexion, although some are 
almost copper-coloured. They do not shave the head, 
but wear the hair coiled up behind, men and women 
having long hair. They wear immense silver earrings 
and necklets, while the hair is decorated with ornaments 
made of the pith of the wood-oil tree and cocks’ feathers, 
Their territory is forbidden ground to the European, the 
Chinese taking care that the restriction is rigorously 
cnforced. The meagre Chinese accounts of this people 
