MINUTES OE ' PROCEEDINGS GE 
66 
was of too isolated a character to contain in itself all the information likely 
to be required. The present paper is also brief and incomplete, but it 
takes a wider scope and may serve as an introduction to the subject in 
general. The portion relating to the properties of gun-cotton is mainly 
derived from the report presented to the British Association at the meeting 
of 1863 by the Committee to whom the subject had been referred for con¬ 
sideration at the meeting of 1862. This report is not yet published, but 
will be purchasable in the course of the present year; it is founded partly 
on experiments made by Mr Abel, E.R.S., Chemist to the War Department, 
partly on information given by Baron von Lenk, a Major-General in the 
Austrian artillery (to whom are due the improvements which have made 
gun-cotton practically useful), and partly on the labours of its own members. 
The historical notes on the career of gun-cotton in Austria which are 
inserted here, are condensed from an article which appeared about September, 
last year, in a military periodical entitled “Archiv fur die Offiziere der 
Kceniglich Preussischen Artillerie und Ingenieur Corps.” I have tried to 
make the historical part more complete by the help of other Foreign and 
English periodicals, but there is so little reference to gun-cotton in the 
indexes 'which I have examined that they contributed but little to the 
present remarks. The description of the mode of manufacture is taken 
from an account contributed by Mr Abel to the Report of the British 
Association already mentioned. 
Composition and Properties of Gun-cotton . 
The substance called gun-cotton is prepared by impregnating ordinary 
cotton with a mixture of sulphuric and nitric acids. The method pursued 
in preparing it systematically will be further described at a later part of this 
article, for the present it will be sufficient to state that the proper quantity 
of sulphuric acid is about three times that of the nitric acid, and that when 
the saturated cotton has been thoroughly washed and completely dried its 
conversion into gun-cotton is complete. 
The cotton thus treated is transformed into an explosive substance, but 
has undergone so little change in its appearance that the difference would 
not be remarked. The process has added about 80 per cent, to its weight, 
and has made it harsher to the touch, but has not given it any colour, smell, 
or taste, as an indication of the new properties it has acquired. To all 
appearance it is still fit for weaving into calico or for applying to any 
domestic purpose, but it possesses a power which fits it for new employments. 
It is capable of being substituted for gunpowder, it is made for that sole 
purpose, and it bears accordingly in all countries a name expressive of that 
application* 
Whether the material is qualified in all respects to be substituted for 
gunpowder is at present a moot point. The gun-cotton made seventeen 
* In German it is Schiesswoll, * shooting cotton $’ abbreviated from Schiessbaumwoll the name 
at first used. In French it is now called e poudre-coton * or ‘ coton-poudre/ but in 1847 it was 
described under the name of ‘coton-detonnant* and { fulmi-coton.’ 
