The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-12-23 00:00:00

NEW PRIMER FOR A. MUSKET.—A new primer for E
musket, recently invented by Mr. Westley Richards, the
well-known gun-maker, of Birmingham, has undergone a
most effectual trial on board H.M.S. Excellent, at this port,
for the last three months ; and' as Sir Thomas Hastings has
recommended the Board of Admiralty to adopt it for the use
of. the navy. we should hope that this simple and ingenious
invention will be secured to the Government. The following
is a description of it :—The primer, which is intended to
supersede the copper cap, is of a very novel character, being
Made of a paper mache or mill board, and perfectly secure
from damp or wet in its process of manufacture. It is one
inch in length, half an inch wide, and the sixteenth of an
inch in thickness, the form being slightly wedge shape. The
application to the gun is most readily applied into a touch-
hole suitable to it, instead of the common cone or nipple ;
the priming powder is concealed in the centre of the primer,
and covered with tin foil. The gun is fired in the ordinary
manner, and for military and naval use it is decidedly superior
to the copper cap, as, after explosion, the primer is perfectly
harmless ; and on the deck of a ship. sailors without shoes
cannot be injured by laceration of the feet, which must inevi-
tably be the case from an exploded copper cap when trod
upon. Their cheapness and decaying quality is also a great
recommendation to them ; at the same time, they are per-
fectly impervious to damp or wet.—Hampshire Telegraph.

EXHUMATION OF CHOLERA VICTIMS.—MOSt of our
readers will recollect the time " when the angel of death
spread his wings on the blast," and the cholera morbus made
such fearful ravages in the land. We recollect hearing, at
the period referred to, of a poor woman, young and beauti-
ful, who, with her infant in her arms, fled from the pesti-
lence, which had even found its way to the foot of Ben Nevis,
and contaminated the pure air of our Lochaber mountains
with its deadly breath. She fled from the village of Fort
William, to the braes of Lochaber ; but, alas ! she carried
along with her the seeds of the awful distemper, and, upon
reaching the house of her aged mother, she and her infant
died. Our unsophisticated rustics. who would undoubtedly
face a foe, turned pale at the rumour of the plague being
amongst them, and none could be found to consign the dead
to their last home, until the clergyman of the parish (Kill-
monivaig), the late Captain Macdonell, Killichonate, the
medical attendant, Dr. Kennedy, Fort William, and one
other kind neighbour (who has since paid the debt of na-
ture), actuated by a sense of humanity and duty, performed
the last sad office to the unfortunate dead. Having con-
structed a rude coffin, out of a carpenter's bench, these
gentlemen dog a grave with their own hands, at a short dis-
tance from the house where the mother and child had died.
In this hastily-constructed grave the remains of both victims
were deposited, without a shroud but the blanket in which
they died. Ten long years afterwards—that is `a few weeks
since—the woman's mother died ; and her son, who had
long wished to remove the bodies of his sister and her child
from their grave in the croft to one in the churchyard of
their native parish, for this purpose caused the grave to be
opened, and the bodies to be exhumed. Strange to say,
after the inhumation of ten years, they were found not only
entire, but perfectly firm, though black, as if they had lived
and died under the burning sun of Ethiopia, instead of our
northern clime. We may ask, is this state of preservation
and change of colour a common occurrence ? Does it arise
from the nature of the soil, which, in this instance, is a very
dark and impervious clay—from the circumstance of the
coffin being full of water—or is it a characteristic result of
the disease ? People will probably have some difficulty in
answering the last query from experimental knowledge, as it
is likely but few, or none, who have died of cholera, have
been ever re-exposed to view. It was a singular case; and
there was something very affecting in seeing the infant, as if
asleep, upon its mother's arm, with its little head buried in
her bosom, while her head was turned towards its cheek,
just as they had died ten years before. It was also a sad,
and, we hope, an instructive spectacle, to witness the aged
grandmother, the mother, and tender infant, consigned to
one grave in the parish churchyard.—lnverness Courier.