THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
65 
GXJN COTTON: 
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPERTIES AND HISTORY OF THE 
SUBSTANCE. 
In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas 
Corpora. Ov id. 
BY MAJOR F. MILLER, TC, R.A, 
Introductory Remarks. 
A Committee lias lately been appointed by the Secretary of State for 
War to examine into the applicability of gun-cotton to military purposes 
and to raining or other engineering operations. It is composed partly of 
scientific men, fellows of the Royal Society, and partly of naval and military 
officers selected from various branches of the service. The President 
combines the experience of a military profession with the acquirements 
of a long course of distinguished scientific researches, and the entire 
committee may fairly be said to have every qualification for the proper 
treatment of the subject. 
Whatever the result of this examination may be, the course of the inquiry 
cannot fail to possess a high degree of interest. The phenomena presented 
by the combustion of gun-cotton under various conditions would attract 
the attention of the curious for their own sake, but the object of instituting 
the inquiry gives a practical importance to the subject. The point to be 
determined is whether gunpowder, the curse of the devil, as it was called by 
writers of old, the villainous saltpetre,” to use Shakespeare's words, “ which 
many a good tall fellow hath destroyed so cowardly ” shall be supplanted by 
a new agent with more secret and more formidable powers of destruction. 
It is a question of relinquishing a substance which has been growing in 
importance during five hundred years, and of which the consumption has 
become enormous throughout the world; whilst the proposed substitute has 
been as yet so little used that up to a few months ago the manufactory 
established by the Austrian government was the only one in existence. 
Published accounts of the qualities of gun-cotton and of the experiments 
made upon them are almost as scarce as the material itself. Scattered 
notices are to be found in various works, and a few reports may be met 
with, but they are neither complete nor easy of reference. One article has 
already appeared in these pages,* but it was confined to special points and 
[vol. IV.] 
* Vol. III. p. 367. 
9 
