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MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
A practical cliemist who superintended the works was amongst the killed. 
The verdict of the coroner’s jury was that <f no evidence appeared how the 
explosion arose/' and that no blame was to be attributed to any of the 
managers. The proper temperatures for the workshops were 120° for one 
and 110° for the other, and the man in charge of the fires which warmed 
them deposed that they were as near that as possible on the morning of the 
explosion, which took place at 11 a.m. 
All further manufacture was given up, and ail the cotton that had been 
converted into gun-cotton was buried in the ground as the safest means of 
getting rid of so uncertain and dangerous a stock. Sixteen years afterwards 
some of it was dug up for its qualities to be tested. Throughout this period, 
from the interment to the disinterment, gun-cotton may be considered to 
have been in a dormant state, so far as this country was concerned, and any 
attempts to introduce it were suspended. Professors of Chemistry noticed 
it in their lectures, and praised its powers but condemned it as unpractical. 
Amateurs of Chemistry made it for their amusement, and generally found 
cause to avoid it for their safety. It was considered as little likely to 
become a safe and useful servant as an Ethiopian to change his skin, or a 
leopard his spots. 
Such reports as came from Prance and Germany, where the inquiry was 
more systematically conducted, served to corroborate the opinion formed in 
England. Sooner or later it came to be condemned in all countries, and in 
all but one it was given up; in Austria alone, men of rank and influence 
clung to the idea; they were able to get a hearing for it, and they persevered 
in it, until, after being more than once adopted and rejected, gun-cotton is 
acknowledged and used by the artillery and engineers. It is therefore in 
Austria that we shall find the links which connect its fall in 1847 with its 
rise in 1863, and learn the incidents which accompanied its progress, or had 
any influence on its career. There happened to appear lately, in a German 
Military Periodical, an article which relates these details, and as I have 
reason to believe it may be depended upon as a guide, I have made the 
following epitome of it, adhering as far as possible, where the statements 
are of importance, to the exact words used by the writer. 
History of Gun-cotton in Austria . 
The attention of the Diet (Bundesversammlung) being called to gun¬ 
cotton in 1846, by Professors Schonbein and Bottcher the two inventors, 
they appointed a committee, composed of officers from different German 
armies to report upon it. This committee pronounced it altogether 
inapplicable to military purposes; and experiments made about the same 
time at Yienna and other places led to equally unfavourable opinions being 
formed. 
But one of the members of the committee above-mentioned, Baron von 
Lenk, a captain in the Austrian artillery, continued his investigations after 
the committee was dissolved, and his efforts were so far successful that he 
produced a material whose possible applicability to military purposes could 
not be denied. His experiments were conducted in the first two years (1847 
and 1848) almost exclusively at Mayence; afterwards, in 1850 and 1851 
they were made also at Yienna, and he received the support of Eeldzeug- 
meister Count Degenfeld, the present Minister of War. 
