204 
CAPTAIN NOBLE AND MR. F. A. ABEL ON FIRED GUNPOWDER. 
memoir on “ Fired Gunpowderand as the attention which the researches described 
in that memoir have received, especially on the Continent, is an evidence both of the 
theoretical and practical importance of our subject, we propose, prior to laying before 
the Society our researches on gun-cotton, to discuss a few points of considerable 
interest which have arisen out of our former investigations, and to give the results 
of some further experiments on gunpowder. 
The Academy of Sciences of France having done us the honour to appoint a Com¬ 
mission to report on our researches, there have appeared in the £ Comptes Bendus ’ a 
joint report* by General Morin and M. Berthelot, and twot separate memoirs on 
certain chemical points by the latter savant. 
The high appreciation of our labours shown by the Academy has induced us to pay 
special attention to one or two points mentioned by the distinguished reporters as 
being open to discussion ; we will now proceed to consider them, and to detail some 
further experiments calculated to throw light upon the different questions raised. 
The principal points to which General Morin and M. Berthelot draw attention 
are— 
1. Potassium hyposulphite has been found as one of the products of combustion of 
gunpowder by every recent investigator. But the question arises, Is this product 
either wholly or in part primary ? Or is it to be considered as secondary, formed from 
the primary products during the rapid loss of heat to which they are exposed ? Or is 
it, finally, to be considered only as formed from the sulphide by the absorption of 
oxygen, during the processes of removal from the cylinder and of analysis, and therefore 
to be regarded as an accidental product ? 
2. In the memoir in question we stated that, according to our view, “ any attempt 
to express, even in a complicated chemical equation, the nature of the metamorphosis 
which a gunpowder of average composition may be considered to undergo, would only 
be calculated to convey an erroneous impression as to the simplicity or definite nature 
of the chemical results and their uniformity under different conditions, while possessing 
no important bearing upon an elucidation of the theory of the explosion of gunpowder.” 
M. Berthelot, however, in a memoir upon the explosion of powder, based on our 
results, proposes to represent these results by a system of simultaneous equations 
expressing the chemical metamorphosis undergone by powder, at least as far as regards 
its fundamental products. 
3. In the joint report of General Morin and M. Berthelot, and in the separate 
memoir above referred to of M. Berthelot, special attention is called to the heat 
disengaged by the explosion, and our determination, presented, as the reporters point- 
out, with some reserve, is considered to be too low, partly because the apparatus used 
did not admit of extreme delicacy, and partly because higher determinations have 
been made by M. Tromenec and MM. Pioux and Sarrau. 
* ‘ Comptes Rendus,’ tom. lxxxii., p. 487. 
t Idem., pp. 400 and 469. 
