186 
BURSTING OF HEAVY GUNS. 
As to the marks on the front part of the bore, I lay little stress on 
them, because the state of things was such that violent scoring and frac¬ 
ture might be expected, and that of an irregular character. We have 
a common shell broken and wedged up in front of a charge fired with 
sudden and exceptional violence, then a Palliser shell broken across with 
its stud sheared, and a battering charge in explosion behind it. With 
this going on the gun would arrive at a state of dissolution too advanced 
to be subject to rule. The front fractures may be striking, then, as the 
exhibition of physical force, but 1 question if much instruction is to be 
obtained from them, except perhaps the indications that the bore was 
broken up partly by the action of the projectiles in its interior, and not 
only by the force of powder. For example, the steel bore is specially 
scored and cut and distorted by fragments from 10ft. 6 ins. from the 
bottom of the bore to within about 2 ft. of the muzzle, and this is the 
part of the gun which is broken up into the smallest fragments. 
To sum up, we ought to wait for the Committee's report for a final 
opinion, but I submit the above comparison of the evidence before it 
with confidence that reasonable minds will conclude that the two guns 
were burst in the same way. The breech portion of the second gun 
yielded more than that of the first, but little ground will be found on 
which to found a distinction in character between the two. The 
identification of the Palliser stud, and the breaking up of the Palliser 
projectile in the second gun are all in accordance with the conclusion 
of the Malta Committee, and against an opposite explanation. The 
evidence furnished by the projectiles recovered in the Arsenal experi¬ 
ment seems to give a reasonable, if not an unanswerable explanation of 
the fact of the pressure being exerted on the gun in a rather more 
forward position than might have been expected, and than was actually 
obtained by Sir William Palliser in double loading with solid pro¬ 
jectiles. 
Finally, the agreement of the zone of most numerous lines of fracture 
in the exterior of the gun with that of greatest abrasion from projectiles 
in the steel tube seems to show that the gun was broken up, in a measure, 
from the action of an aggravated form of violence from the wedging of 
fragments which would not occur under any ordinary circumstances. 
3. The Palliser Cun Experiment. 
Sir W. Palliser carried out an enterprising programme of experi¬ 
ments on double loading at Erith on Wednesday, March 3rd, his 
object being, as he expresses it, “to ascertain the ultimate strength 
of a gun lined with a coiled barrel 7 ins. in bore and barely 3 ins. 
thick, and in the event of the gun bursting, to see whether or not it 
explodes with violence." It is natural to ask the question whether 
this experiment is connected with the recent trials of the “ Thunderer " 
gun, and whether its results are intended to bear either upon the 
question of how that gun burst, or upon the relative powers of 
Woolwich guns proper and Palliser guns. The object, as stated by 
Sir W. Palliser, necessarily connects itself with the last-named point j 
