30 REPORT—1890. 
fouling in a firearm—and in part distributed in an extremely fine state 
of division through the gases and vapours developed by the explosion, 
thus giving to these the appearance of smoke as they escape into the air. 
So far as smokelessness is concerned, no material can surpass gun- 
cotton (or other varieties of nitro-cellulose); but, even if the rate of 
combustion of the fibrous explosive in a firearm could be controlled with 
certainty and uniformity, its application as a safe propulsive agent is 
attended by so many difficulties that the non-success of the numerous 
early attempts to apply it to that purpose is not surprising. Those attempts, 
commencing soon after the discovery of gun-cotton in 1846, and continued 
many years later in Austria, consisted entirely in varying the density and 
mechanical condition of employment of the gun-cotton fibre. No diffi- 
culty was experienced in thus exercising complete control over the 
rapidity of burning in the open air; but when the material was strongly 
confined, as in the bore of a gun, such methods of regulating its explosive 
force were quite unreliable, as some slight unforeseen variation in its com- 
pactness or in the amount and disposition of the air-spaces in the mass, 
would develop very violent action. Much more promising results were 
subsequently obtained by me by reducing the fibre to a pulp, as in the 
ordinary process of making paper, and converting this into highly-com- 
pressed, homogeneous masses of the desired form and size. Some favour- 
able results were obtained at Woolwich, in 1867-8, in field-guns, with 
cartridges built up of compressed gun-cotton variously formed and 
arranged, with the object of regulating the rapidity of explosion of the 
charge. But although comparatively small charges often gave high 
velocities of projection, without any indications of injury to the gun, the 
uniform fulfilment of the conditions essential to safety proved to be beyond 
absolute control, even in guns of small calibre; and military authorities 
not being, in those days, alive to the advantages which might accrue from 
the employment of an entirely smokeless explosive in artillery, experi- 
ments in this direction were not persevered in. At the same time,~ 
considerable success attended the production of gun-cotton cartridges 
for sporting purposes, the rapidity of its explosion being controlled 
by various methods; very promising results were also attained with 
the Martini-Henry rifle and a lightly-compressed pulped gun-cotton 
charge, of pellet-form, the uniform action of which was secured by simple 
means. 
A nearly smokeless sporting-powder had, in the meantime, been pro- 
duced by Colonel Schultze, of the Prussian Artillery, from finely- 
divided wood, converted after purification into a mildly explosive form 
of nitro-cellulose, and impregnated with a small portion of an oxidising 
agent. Subsequently this powder was produced in a granular form, and 
rendered considerably more uniform in character, and less hygroscopic ; 
it then closely resembled the well-known E.C. sporting powder, which 
consists of a nitro-cotton reduced to pulp, incorporated with the nitrates 
