1 87 1.] War Science. • 47 



force of recoil being placed exceedingly low, it is the more 

 readily overcome when the gun slides back on being fired. 

 An ingenious tackle arrangement allows of the weapon 

 being readily trained and directed, and a break weighing 

 certainly not more than twenty pounds suffices to check the 

 stupendous mass of metal in any desired position. So easily 

 may a 600-pounder gun be worked by the aid of the Scott 

 gun-carriage, that its loading, running up, and firing, 

 actually requires less time than was formerly necessary in 



Fig. 8. 



manipulating the old 32-pounder smooth-bore upon a block 

 carriage. Thus, in squally weather, when the gunners 

 actually find it a difficult matter to move about with safety, 

 heavy cannon can be fired in this way at the rate of one 

 round a minute, and, withal, as steadily and truly as if the 

 weight to be handled amounted but to a few pounds. 



Another invention, of perhaps equal importance, deserves 

 mention while on the subject of gun-carriages. Everyone 

 has heard of the Moncreiff carriage, and the great saving 

 that the same will possibly effect to the country, in the way of 

 rendering unnecessary the construction of fortifications and 

 outworks. The invention represents, in fact, an elaborate 

 mathematical problem successfully solved, the abstruse 

 character of which can scarcely be understood without 

 minute inspection of the details which go to make up the 

 ingenious piece of mechanism. The carriage consists of a 

 platform, supporting upon a movable pivot a strong gun-rest, 

 which may thus be moved easily up and down with a rocking- 

 horse sort of motion, so that the gun is sometimes raised to 

 a height of twelve or fifteen feet, and sometimes lowered 

 almost to the ground ; tlie entire structure is placed in a 

 deep trench or pit dug in the earth — a circular tramway 

 being laid down in the first instance to allow of the carriage 



