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MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
operation, while the operation itself may be said to introduce another 
element of uncertainty, since upon its careful performance, as even Captain 
von Doppelmair admits, 1 the ultimate result will depend. 
Nor, again, is it to the purpose to instance the partial supersession of 
wrought-iron by steel in the domain of civil engineering, for tyres, locomotive 
and carriage axles, &c., 3 the strains to which those articles are exposed being 
of a wholly different character to the strain which has to be borne by a gun. 
It would be more to the purpose to instance the case of steam-boilers, where 
the analogy is somewhat closer, an elastic fluid having to be resisted; and 
for steam-boilers wrought-iron is preferred to steel—the latter, after a lengthy 
and persistent trial, having been more or less abandoned. 
This is the material, the reliability of which, we are told, may be con¬ 
fidently accepted on the trial of a single specimen. This is the material 
for which Captain von Doppelmair desires us to abandon our wrought- 
iron guns. Waving a garish light, and pointing to a few imperfect 
continental experiments, he invites us to leave the terra firma of our 
own experience, and to migrate to the terra incognita of steel. To this 
invitation we would make a twofold reply. We have good cause to be 
satisfied with our guns as they are. In no single instance have they failed 
us on service. We do not admit their inferiority—nay, we claim for them 
a superiority over any other guns in the world. The appeal which is made to 
the Tegel trials only strengthens our satisfaction with our own weapons; for, 
read aright, those experiments proved that with our English gun, firing not 
sensational but service charges, we could equal, if not surpass, the results 
obtained with a far heavier weapon of Krupp* s manufacture, even when the 
latter was fired with charges considerably in excess of those for which it had 
been designed, and with which it had been proved. Nor do we know of any 
other experiments which point to any other conclusion. Secondly, of the 
Krupp guns, even if we desired them, there exists no sufficient experience to 
warrant their adoption. The statement that steel is statically stronger than 
iron may be accepted, but not as bearing on the relative strength of the 
two when the strain to be endured is not statical but dynamic. In the 
criticisms of our system, we can find nothing to satisfy us that the charac¬ 
teristic lack of uniformity in steel lias been overcome by Mr. Krupp; on the 
contrary, in his complete abandonment of solid guns, once as confidently 
recommended as his present weapon, and in the adoption for all calibres, 
from 24-prs. upwards, of the multi-hooped system, 3 we find evidence of a 
failure with Krupp guns of the earlier construction not anticipated by the 
maker. While, as for the principle that “ from the trial of one gun a 
judgment can be formed as to all guns of the same description," we dis¬ 
tinctly and energetically repudiate it as unsafe of application to guns of any 
material, and doubly false and unsafe when that material is steel. And, 
except such trials of single specimens, the critics are unable to advance any 
proof that the present Krupp guns are more trustworthy than the solid 
Krupp guns, which, despite all the good things which were said of them in 
their day, have had to be given up. The present guns may or may not be 
1 Doppelmair, p. 69. 2 Ibid. p. 68. 
3 “ The Prussian artillery are having hoops added to the solid steel guns in stock.”—Doppelmair, 
