The Ideal Gun

Iíecent experimenta, saya Engineeriug, go to show that the gun of the future will be a breeeh-loader, and that it should be built up of an indeünitely large nuinber of very thin coils or tubes, each put on at such a tensión that when a certain pressure is set up in the boro of the gu", ihe whole should be subjected to exactly the samo strain, thus utilizing the strengiu ui uiu Lutticnai iu mv "w"11Iioth theoretieally and practically, however, a gun of tuis kind is exceedingly diflicult to make. The earlier Armstrong guns bad numerous very thin coils, and over and above the great co3t of a structure built up in such a way, it wa3 very diffleult to regúlate the exact amount of shrinkage to be given to each coil. The Woolwich system reduced the number of coils and thickened them, thus departing further frorn the ideal standard. Krupp flrst trïed guns of steel cast iu one solid mass; they naturally failed, and he eventually approached more and more to the methods adopted in England, without, however, ever abandoning his material, steel. Modern experience tends to show the soundness, both in theory and practice, of the system of building up. All ordnance now manufactured of any great power consists of a steel tube surrounded by either massive wruugbt-iron coils, as m the Woolwich guns; lighter and more numerous coils, a3 in the Armstrong; steel tubes or hoops, as in the Krupp; or steel wire and hoops, as in the latest Armstrong. Even at Woolwich, the stroughold of wroughtiron, the superior merits of steel appear at last to be acknowledged, and it seems probable that, alter a few years, the use of wrought-iron will gradually bave disappeared. A Woodbuiy woman accidentall swallowed some arseuic that had been gotten to destroy auts. As she was not an auut she was not destroyed.