358 
I remarked, however, on the 11th inst., and again repeat, that, even 
assuming the earlier date, a crude proposal of this nature, not even in 
writing, for anything that is affirmed, much less accompanied by any 
drawings, and not necessarily inferring any knowledge whatever beyond 
the mere fact (known to every schoolboy) that wrapping rope round a 
cannon must make it harder to burst. than before, without the slightest 
cognizance of the principle of ringed construction with initial tension, is 
a very different thing from the substantive design, drawn to scale, in 
October, 1854, and brought before government officers in December, 
1854, and having internal evidence on the face of it, proving incontes- 
tibly a knowledge on the part of the designer of principles, by which 
increased strength is so obtained. My appeal is, therefore, still to the 
design of October—December, 1854—which the Academy have done me 
the honor to require being reproduced as part of its Proceedings. 
In my paper read here the 11th inst., I accorded to Captain Blakely 
as the earliest date, at which he could show any evidence of knowledge, 
of method and principle together, of construction with initial tension, 
that of the bursting of his first gun at Woolwich (the 18-pounder) on 
the 25th May, 1855. Captain Blakely objects to this, that the gun had 
to be made before it was burst, and demands to move back the date of 
his priority, as evidenced by this gun, to the rather indistinct epoch of 
“early in 1855,”’ and invokes the name of Sir Charles Fox to sustain 
him. 
Sir Charles’s own letter, however, which he has published in his 
pamphlet of 1858, Appendix 0, p. 48, unfortunately fixes this date to 
April, 1855, and at p. 28 of the pamphlet we find stated (by quotation 
from their Report) that on the 25th of April, 1855, the O. 8. Committee 
was directed to place itself in communication with Captain Blakely relative 
to fabrication of guns upon his principle,’’ which is obviously the date 
of his first communication with them. 
Suppose we grant Captain Blakely, then, even two months anterior 
to this, for the concoction of his plan (and: assume concoction to be equi- 
valent to publication), it will only bring him back to the 25th February, 
1855, whichis the date of his provisional specification of his patent, and 
he is still two months, and better, posterior to the date at which my 
36-inch mortar design was publicly exhibited to various persons, besides 
Captain Boxer and:General Portlock. 
It would be waste of time after this to discuss the claim now set up 
(in his written statement) for the first time, although the word persist is 
used, for the priority of Sir Charles Fox (who never produced a. line upon 
the subject) over Dr. Hart and myself, beyond remarking that Sir 
Charles Fox’s name was not so much as once uttered by Captain Blakely 
in his spoken reply of the 11th inst. here. 
In a word, Sir Charles Fox’s name is most illogically introduced 
into this controversy at all by Captain Blakely, because, whatever 
may have been that gentleman’s private information on the subject 
of ringed construction of ordnance prior to April, 1855, we have his 
own assurance, as printed by Captain Blakely, that ‘“‘he had never 
