SHOUT NOTES ON PROFESSIONAL SUBJECTS. 
3 
The bullet was of hammered iron, but was half eaten away with rust, and on 
examination of the jingall itself, it was found to be completely honeycombed and 
seamed by age and exposure, so much so that a man’s finger could be in some 
places nearly embedded, the outside at the same time presenting very few traces of 
decay. 
When the prisoner “ Joogee” was killed, eleven others, who were also employed 
at and near the forge, were more or less wounded by large scales of rust being pro¬ 
jected with the ball, the men presenting the appearance of being deeply pitted by 
smallpox. 
On this occurring, the remaining matchlocks and wall-pieces were thoroughly 
examined, when another was found to be loaded. The powder was of country 
manufacture, and perfectly red. The gun that caused the fatal accident did not 
explode till it became cherry red; it was supposed to be one of Tippoo’s make, 
and all that were brought in from Chenroy Droog Port had the appearance of 
great age. 
Chenroy Droog was one of Tippoo’s forts, it is built of stone in chunam, is well 
constructed, has a stone wall surrounding its summit, and two lines of defence 
extending along the south and east faces well flanked with circular bastions and 
commanded by cavaliers, but not finished (like most of Tippoo’s works) to the 
extent proposed. 
A story is related in Upper Canada of a precisely similar occurrence some 
thirty years ago. An Irish settler had for years made use of an old gun barrel for 
stirring his fire, using as far as was known either end indifferently. The barrel 
however exploded one day. and killed him. Several good stories were current in 
the Crimea of musket barrels used as fire bars behaving in the same way, where 
however the consequences where not so serious. Chemically the fact presents no 
difficulty, although gunpowder deteriorates by age principally because of its 
absorbing moisture, time produces no change in the ingredients themselves, and 
nothing short of the removal of the saltpetre from a powder charge would prevent 
it eventually exploding when heated in the manner described. The explosion of 
the store of gunpowder at Ehodes in 1857,-powder concealed from A.D. 1522 to 
a.d. 1827, and neglected until the accident occurred, is another instance that the 
sleep of this agent is not death. 
7. Time fuzes, their rate of burning Two papers were printed in the 
third volume of these tc Proceedings,” pp. 15 and 259, on the influence of diminished 
atmospheric pressure upon the time of burning of a time fuze, leading to the general 
conclusion that a fuze at rest burns more rapidly, the greater the pressure; mote 
rapidly for example at the bottom of a mountain than at the top, more slowly 
towards the summit of a lofty trajectory (as in mortar firing) than at either end; 
and the decrease in the rate of burning was determined to be O'0011 of the whole 
time for —*0394 or 1 millimetre of barometric pressure, corresponding to about 
83 feet of elevation near the sea level. That fuzes in motion should be similarly 
affected is a natural conclusion, and their rate of burning in shells of different forms 
and of different sizes, thus becomes in some measure a criterion of the relative 
pressures to which they are subjected by the resistance of the air. The more rapid 
the rate of burning the greater the pressure. The following average times of 
burning 1 inch collected from actual practice for the practical purpose of assigning 
rules for setting the fuzes, although they present several anomalies, and the direct 
effect is complicated by the different sizes of the shells or different volumes of air to 
be displaced, will be found to support this conclusion in the main, and shew the 
inaccuracy of the common rule that the fuze burns at an inch in 5 seconds nearly $ 
every shell has its own rate. The initial velocity of the shell is stated. In the 
case of mortars it is the velocity due to the medium charge employedi 
