164 
SHORT NOTES ON PROFESSIONAL SUBJECTS. 
fibrous structure while the others did, it is well known that this fibrous structure 
tends to disappear, and to give place to a clean, smooth, crystalline surface, in pro¬ 
portion to the suddenness with which the bursting of the metal takes place. Now, 
the beginning of every bursting of a gun naturally lasts a shorter time than the end 
of it, and so different structures will continually be recognised in cracks which have 
not been quite simultaneously produced, provided the excellence and homogeneity 
of the metal of the gun leave nothing to be desired. 
Whether the cause which made the 11-in. Krupp gun burst at the muzzle will 
receive a completely satisfactory clearing up may be left undecided. Meanwhile we 
may rest satisfied that the present is an exceptional case, and to anticipate all excep¬ 
tional cases we may characterise as an impossibility. In any case it would be 
easy at once to make the muzzle ends of rifled guns stronger than is customary, or 
even to strengthen them not immaterially by the addition of a reinforce ring and 
ojee; but even this arrangement would not obviate the possibility* of a gun thus 
strengthened occasionally splitting at the muzzle. 
And here let us call to our recollection the Lancaster guns which were brought 
into use in the Crimean war, and subsequently abolished. These guns had smooth 
elliptical bores, with an increasing twist. Their elongated projectiles were made to 
fit the bore, in which they received the same rotatory motion round their longer 
axes as the projectiles of rifled guns. As the Lancaster guns were muzzle-loaders, 
and had therefore windage, a jamming of the projectile occasionally took place, the 
result of which was either the breaking up of the same,- or the splitting of the chase 
of the gun. The construction of these guns was therefore a failure. 
If any dirt, or indeed any foreign matter, be collected in the chase of our present 
rifled guns, the projectile will not take time, on the discharge of the gun, to force it 
out, but will force its own way over it. Then if the lead coating cannot find sufficient 
room, the natural result is either the splitting of the steel tube or the smashing of 
the projectile. 
At experiments which were made with smooth-bore muskets more than thirty 
years ago, merely for the purpose of clearing up this matter, barrels which had 
previously been stopped with sand or dirt were almost invariably split at the muzzle 
by the round lead bullets which were fired out of them. 
Again, with reference to the position of the fragments of the 11-in. gun, we may 
remark that when on the bursting of a gun parts of the same fly in a forward direc¬ 
tion, such can only have been effected by means of the shot impelled by the explo¬ 
sive force of the charge. Also, the mere falling of some of the fragments in a 
downward direction, and the fact that some of those fragments were not also hurled 
sideways by the force of the powder, may, if not with certainty, at least with great 
probability, lead to the final conclusion that the chase of the gun was certainly not 
burst, but simply split by a jamming of the projectile in the bore, although this 
might also have been accompanied by a sideward motion of the fragments. 
* The German word is “ Unmoglickkeit,” which must either be a printer’s error, or a result of 
the very obscure, involved style which characterises the writer in the “ Archive” 
