THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
225 
where V is taken as 428 ft,, and X is 1615 yds. A slight decrease of range 
in (1), or of velocity in (2), would bring the two equations to agreement. 
The observed time was 18*2 secs., making P (X. V) or I) 1*05 in one 
case, or 1*14 in the other. 
32. It is almost idle to speculate on the effects of shells weighing from 
2300 lbs. to nearly 3000 lbs., and with bursting charges of 487 lbs. to 
405 lbs. The experiment was not tried, and in the interests of humanity 
we may hope that it never will be; but few will doubt that if the mortars 
had been completed in time, and Lord Palmerston's intention to send one to 
the Baltic and another to the Black Sea been carried out (and designs for 
mortar rafts had been actually prepared by Mr. Mallet), it would have 
been perceived that a new power had entered the European arena. Those 
heroic soldiers who prolonged the defence of Sevastopol against a feu d’enfer 
had no resources which could have prevented all the defences on the south 
side, up to Dockyard Creek, from being devastated by a succession of such 
mines sprung within them, or those on the north side, including the North 
Port and Battery No. 4, from sharing the like fate, without the exposure of 
the mortar vessel to any destructive fire. The casemates of Cronstadt, like 
everything else of masonry, probably, which the hand of man has put 
together since the Pyramids, must have crumbled under bolts as irresistible 
as those which “fulminanlis magna manus Jovis” discharges; bolts which, 
according to Horace, only the soul of the upright man can defy. 
My admiration for the bold policy of Lord Palmerston, ultimus Romanorum , 
and for the energy and skill of Mr. Mallet, has led me to enter more fully 
into the history of this great experiment in artillery than I at first intended, 
but I venture to hope that artillerymen will find it worth narrating. That 
gentleman has at my request related in the subjoined note some particulars 
which do not appear in the papers I have consulted, and which will complete 
the narrative of an enterprise which must always be memorable in the 
history of British artillery. 
J, H. LEFEOY. 
January, 1871. 
