SHOUT NOTES ON PROFESSIONAL SUBJECTS. 
163 
weighing 550 lbs. (Russ,), a special committee having been appointed to superin¬ 
tend the experiment. 
“ The bursting was not caused by the jamming of the shot, as the lands and 
grooves were everywhere quite uninjured (?),* but in the opinion of the committee 
it was probably due to a flaw in the metal near the muzzle; and this opinion was 
founded on the general direction of the fracture, on the appearance of the metal at 
the fracture, and on the position of the fragments torn from the gun. The most 
characteristic circumstance was the tearing off of some of the fragments close to the 
muzzle, where on one of the surfaces of breakage a fibrous expansion of the metal 
was not observable, while it was to be found on all the others. Such a crack, how¬ 
ever, entirely without indentations, notches, or crumbled bits, is peculiar to metal 
which has been burst at a spot where there had previously been a flaw (?). 
• { Experience teaches us that such flaws originate at the boring of guns out of cast 
(and not wrought) metal, on the surface of which hollow spots are discernible. 
Experience has equally taught us that such flaws are only to be found in the chase 
of a gun—never in the chamber. When the gun is bored out, most of these flaws 
disappear, but they are sometimes so fine that the eye cannot detect them, and when 
they remain on the surface of the bore they may cause the bursting of the gun. 
However, this but rarely happens, and the writer knows but of one case in which it 
has happened. 
“ At Slatrusk a star-shaped flaw was discovered in a 4-pr. steel gun, after it had 
been bored out. When the gun was further bored out the flaw disappeared, but a 
very careful examination revealed traces of it, as fine as hair, at the muzzle of the 
gun (were these traces offshoots from the star-shaped flaw?). This gun was then 
subjected to the most careful experiments, and at the 813th round the muzzle was 
torn off, and the fracture was found to be in the same direction as the above- 
mentioned flaw (?). 
“This was analogous to the bursting of the 11-in. gun, with this difference—that 
in the one case the previously existing flaw was pointed out, in the other it was not. 
The largeness of the charge had nothing to do with the matter, but the sole origin 
of the mischief was a pre-existent flaw in the bore of the gun. Elaws are often to 
be found in cast-iron and bronze guns, without necessarily causing them to burst. 
They can never be quite avoided. The expansion of the powder gas at the muzzle 
of an 11-in. gun is as nothing against the resisting power of steel tubes of such a 
calibre. It is therefore highly probable that the bursting of the gun in question was 
caused by a flaw near the muzzle.” 
However we may be disposed to examine the explanation here attempted, we 
must necessarily come to the conclusion that it cannot hold water for one moment, 
since no one could really point out in the fragments that were picked up the flaw 
near the muzzle ascribed to the gun. The proof of such a flaw should be demanded, 
because every crack produced by the force of powder, or in any violent way what¬ 
ever, shows a crystalline or fibrous structure of the metal, which is not the case with 
cracks, whether in the shape of holes or fissures, which are produced during the 
founding of the metal, and the difference between the two is such that it can be 
plainly recognised even by the eye of the uninitiated. But, as regards the circum¬ 
stance from which it has been inferred that one may assume the existence of a fault 
in the metal arising during manufacture from the fact that one crack displayed no 
* The notes of interrogation are in every case those of the writer in the “ Archiv.’ 
