30 



Anniversary Meeting. 



[Nov. 30, 



castle in September last, and is now in the press. The Committee had 

 the advantage of personal communication with General von Lent, of the 

 Imperial Austrian Artillery, the inventor of the system of preparation and 

 adaptation by which gun-cotton has been made practically available for 

 warlike purposes in the Austrian service. On the invitation of the Com- 

 mittee, and with the very liberal permission of the Emperor of Austria, 

 General von Lenk visited England for the purpose of thoroughly explaining 

 his system ; and we have in the Report of the Committee the information, 

 thus gained directly from the fountain-head, of the results of his experi- 

 ence in the course of trials extending over many years, together with 

 additional investigations by individual members of the Committee. 



The advantages which are claimed for gun-cotton over gunpowder for 

 ordnance-purposes and mining-operations are so many and so important as 

 to call imperatively for the fullest investigation. Such an inquiry, how- 

 ever, in its complete sense, is both beyond and beside the scope and pur- 

 poses of a purely scientific body ; and the British Association have done 

 well (whilst reappointing the Committee to complete certain experiments 

 which they had devised with the view of clearing up some scientific points 

 which are still more or less obscure) in pressing on the attention of Her 

 Majesty's Government the expediency of instituting under its own auspices 

 a full and searching inquiry into the possible applications of gun-cotton 

 in the public service. 



The absence of smoke, and the entire freedom from the fouling of the 

 gun, are points of great moment in promoting the rapidity of fire and 

 the accuracy of aim of guns employed in casemates or in the between decks 

 of ships of war ; to these we must add the innocuous character of the pro- 

 ducts of combustion in comparison with those of gunpowder, and the far 

 inferior heat imparted to the gun itself by repeated and rapid discharges. 

 With equal projectile effects, the weight of the charge of gun-cotton is but 

 one-third of that of gunpowder; the recoil is stated] to be reduced in the 

 proportion of 2 to 3, and the length of the gun itself to admit of a dimi- 

 nution of nearly one-third. These conclusions are based on the evidence 

 of long and apparently very carefully conducted courses of experiment 

 in the Imperial Factory in the neighbourhood of Vienna. The results 

 appear to be especially deserving the attention of those who are engaged 

 in the important problems of facilitating the employment of guns of large 

 calibre and of great projectile force in the broadsides of our line-of-battle 

 ships, and in reducing, as far as may be possible, the dimensions of the 

 ports. 



In the varied applications of explosive force in military or civil engineer- 

 ing, the details of many experiments which bear on this branch of the 

 inquiry are stated in the Report of the Committee, and appear to be 

 highly worthy of consideration and of further experiment. 



It cannot be said that the advantages now claimed for gun-cotton are 

 altogether a novel subject of discussion in this country. When the 



