The demon went in, and up stairs, but he broke
nothing beyond the fact that Halgover was paying
the cab. Arabella prepared for a gush of overwhelming welcome.
“I introduce to you the member for Stackleborough,” said the fiend, taking his friend’s hand.
Arabella sprang up. The M.P. removed his hat. Mr. Thomas Moore has described what happened when the Veiled Prophet unveiled to Zelica.
Sir Cresswell Cresswell, in giving judgment, said,
* * * *
[N.B. I hereby interdict any hairdresser, respectable or otherwise, from adding a neat sentence, and converting the above into a puff for any Oil of Jehoshaphat or Limpid Balm of Harabia.] Shirley Brooks.
ENGLISH PROJECTILES.
On the Parade inside the Horse Guards, near where once ran the northern channel of the Kiln Burn, serving with the Chelsea Creek to enclose the Thorney Island, whereon Westminster Abbey was built, is a very long brass cannon, considerably shortened at the muzzle, brought we believe from Egypt in the days when our Sydney Smith baffled the elder Bonaparte; on the green, inside the gates of Woolwich Arsenal, there is a similar gun, also of Eastern origin: and both of them remarkable for their small bore compared with their length. In the United Service Museum there is an East Indian matchlock, with a small bore and an enormously long barrel. Why was this structure adopted? Certainly not from mere fancy, for we find that these weapons are but types of the general form, and inasmuch as it is a more troublesome matter to cast, and bore, and forge long guns than short ones, we may be sure it was not done save for some useful purpose. The object was threefold. First, to obtain power. A gun expels its charge or bullet by the expansion of powder burnt, precisely as a piston is moved along a cylinder by the expansion of steam heated. To produce the best effect with a steam-engine, the piston fits the cylinder with an elastic packing, both surfaces being truly turned and bored to make an accurate fit with the minimum of friction, yet without permitting any particle of steam to pass between cylinder and piston. If the cylinder or piston be rusty there will be no fit; but if polished, the fit may be, and is, so accurate, and the friction so small, that the piston may be moved by hand, though the steam cannot escape. But the steam is not suffered to exert a violent force, like a man who wastes his power on mere passion. When the cylinder is one-third or one-half full, the supply is stopped, and then the process called “expansion” takes place — the force going on by the swelling of the steam, and this expansion, of course, operates best in a long cylinder compared with a very short one. Precisely thus was the process with the long guns described before. Whether they were truly bored and highly polished we do not now know; but the powder was of a slow burning quality, and had it been used in a short gun a large quantity would have been wasted by being thrown out at the muzzle, and the expansive action of the gases would not have taken place. The second advantage was, that the two sights being a long way apart, a truer aim could be taken at the object. The third advantage was, that the truth of flight in the projectile was powerfully influenced by the length of the guide diminishing any tangential tendency, for which purpose rifle grooves were invented, as a mode of accomplishing the same object with a shorter barrel. Whether the rifle groove is the best method is by no means proven, though the tendency of almost all modem effort sets in that direction. That there is some connection between length of barrel and length of range there is little doubt; and Queen Elizabeth’s pocket-pistol is a proof that our ancestors thought so ; and the Indian blow- pipe, which throws a dart a hundred paces, acts by the expansion of a long column of air heated by the breath, as do our children’s pop-guns by the pressure of the hand.
The rifled barrel was invented for the use of leaden bullets which would take the impress of the grooves. The advantage of the spinning motion thus given was recognised by one of our earliest writers on gunnery, Robins — a member, it was said, of the Society of Friends — and he was the first to propound in print the making rifled cannon, to be fitted with iron balls with leaden projections fixed, precisely like those attributed to the French Emperor. But Robins dealt wholly with spherical balls, and did not dream of elongated shot; and the elongated shot is a more important matter than the rifle, which is subsidiary to it, tending to keep it from turning over in its flight.
Neither is this shot altogether new. It is simply a shortened arrow — shorter than the crossbow bolt or quarry, which was the first curtailment of the arrow. The great advantage of the elongated shot over the spherical bullet is, that with a given weight the cleavage resistance of the atmosphere is diminished. A smaller bore will throw an equally heavy shot, or an equal bore will throw a heavier shot. For years we have been working up to this; and one of the earliest experimenters was a German gun-maker, named Staudennayer, who resided at Charing Cross, and made what he called thimble bullets — in the form of a woman’s thimble, with a very thick end — the germ in fact of the Mini<j, the Pritchett, and the Jacob shot of the present day. The usual length of these modern shot is about two diameters for hand-guns, but for cannon Whit- worth and Armstrong have increased the length to about four diameters. How far this length may be carried is still a matter for experiment. The “cloth-yard shaft ” was a long cylindrico- parabolic tail, joined to a short cylindrico-parabolic head, at one-fourth the total length, which was about seventy-two diameters of the extreme thickness. Marvellous was the flight and range of this muscle-moved projectile, but nothing like this has been attempted with powder propulsion.
The rapid passage of bodies moving through