THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
197 
Belgium however does not consider it worth while trying more 
experiments with phosphor-bronze. 
In 1872 an exhaustive trial was undertaken at Bourges by the French 
Government with 4-prs .; four of these pieces were cast; two being of 
ordinary bronze and two of an alloy of phosphor-bronze, proposed by 
M. Montefiore Levy, one of the latter being cast solid and the other 
hollow. That cast solid failed at the preliminary water test, but the 
other stood well the first 500 service rounds and subsequently burst 
(but not explosively) with a charge of 4 lbs. of powder and a 20 lb. 
shot. Its superiority over the gun cast from ordinary bronze was so 
slight, that the committee carrying on the experiments, concluded that 
any advantages it possessed were more than neutralized by the necessity 
of adding the phosphorus in very exact proportions, and so further 
complicating the manufacture of bronze guns. 
Colonel Bosset, of the Italian Artillery, superintendent of the 
arsenal at Turin, has for some years past been carrying on a series of 
interesting trials, with regard to bronze and other metals in the arsenal 
at Turin, where a 7 , 5c gun of bronze phosphorus was tested in compa¬ 
rison with others of ordinary bronze, This gun stood the trial well, 
and the alloy from which it was cast, (in an iron mould) showed a 
tensile strength of about 25 tons per square inch. Notwithstanding 
this, however, Colonel Rosset concluded that it was not advisable to 
employ such an alloy in gun manufacture on account of the unstable 
character of phosphorus, and the great difficulty of securing uniformity 
of result in the mixture of this element with bronze. 
Russia appears to have adopted this nature of bronze for 3-pr. 
mountain guns, and is also trying it for for 9° R.B.L. pieces. 
In Austria great attention has always been paid to bronze and 
analogous alloys,* and General Yon Uchatius, the director of the Arsenal 
at Vienna, has for years studied the subject. In a lecture lately delivered 
by him, he tells us that about two years ago his attention was particu¬ 
larly called to a fragment of bronze, cast under pressure, which the 
Archduke William had brought from Russia. He found the properties 
of this metal so far superior to those of bronze cast in the ordinary 
way,f that he was led to the researches detailed in the following 
pages. 
The experiments were begun by casting an alloy with 10°/ o of tin, 
in an iron mould, under a pressure of 78 tons per square inch. The 
metal so obtained was homogeneous, and in quality resembled the 
Russian bronze. 
^ “ Sterro-metal ” for instance was an Austrian invention, being a species of brass 
Raving in it small quantities of iron and tin ; much was hoped from this when introduced 
in 1873. Its tensile strength is nearly double that of bronze, but it is difficult to secure 
uniformity in the casting. 
f Ordinary bronze has a tensile strength of about 14| tons, but bronze cast Under 
pressure gives a tensile strength of 19f tons, with an equal elasticity to common bronze. 
