The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-06-09

Ito leather guns. aWnelleE used Uy 116l- Try VIII. or another. it is clear enough that Scot was not the first inventor.
 The strangest material ever used for artillery is. no doubt. ice. but we are assured by the most serious historians that four guns and two mortars so con structed were fired six times each with iout bursting. It was at the marriage lof Prince Galitzin, one of the brutal Ijests which amused the Empress Anne of Russia. The prince, an anliable and Intelligent veteran. was her favorite butt: as crowning stroke of humor she married him to a poor woman of eighty-five, and presented the unhappy Ecouple with a palace, furnished from attic to cellar-but the building and all in it was ice. After a banquet and ball, which must have been uncom- monly chilly. bride and bridegroom Ewere undressed and laid upon nuptial bed of ice, while the four guns and two mortars outside, also of ice, discharged salvoes. So they remained, shut in, till morning. The jest proved killing to lboth. But terra-cotta, as material for cannon is almost as strange as ice. It has been used, nevertheless, though Enot exactly for warlike purposes. Some fifty years ago number of ter ra-eotta guns. with a store of terra cotta balls, were found in a tomb upon the island of Chimal, in southern Mex leo. They were good limitations of Spanish pieces in the time of the Con- quest. nearly five feet long. It is sug- gested that the Indians made them Sf- ter Cortes had passed through the lcountry, hoping, perhaps. that when they had cannon like his in appearance, by some mystic power the things would f ''go off" and kill people. Of golden arr
 tillery there are several examples. The Gaekwar of Baroda has two, which would not be ineffective probably, for they were lined with steel; but the Tcasings of gold are substantial enough to be valued at ten thousand pounds leach. Devout Mahrattas travel far to ''de poojah" before these precious en- Egines. We never heard of wooden guns. excepting dummies" such as the Chi Enese government mounted on the walls | of Pekin. But Carlyle mentions a pro- ject for manufacturing them, submit- ted to the committee de salut public: One citizen has wrought out the scheme of a wooden cannon, which i France shall exclusively profit by in the first instance. It is to be made of slaves by the coopers-of almost bound less calibre. but uncertain as to strength"
 The Knights of Malta invented a spe- cies of artillery all their own. We have a pleasant description of it in [ 'Brydone's Travels a book deservedly renowned in it's day, not yet universal ly forgotten. He saw Malta when the rule of the knights was just coming 10 an end, and very curious are his ob
 servations. Upon the top of the cliff, wherever an enemy might land, the engineers sank holes in the living rock gigantic mortars, as it were. In some cases the diameter was as much as six feet, and the smallest held barrel of gunpowder. Upon the charge lay wooden cover, exactly fitting, on which were placed stones. cannon balls and fragments of metal, the whole rarnmed tight. The biggest would discharge forty tons of these miscellaneous pro- jectiIes in a shower. covering a space of two or three hundred yards. The crew of the stoutest iron-clad would be very uncomfortable when that eshower of | boulders descended from the sky like volcanic eruption. even if the vessel were not seriously damaged. But the contrivance was never tested, appa- rently. We recall the invention of Ma pier of Merchiston, which was guaran- teed to clear an area of four miles cir conference, annihilating all objects thereon above twelve inches high. Sir Thomas Urquhart says that it was rashly tried on a large plain, when
 many sheep and cattle were blown 1 into space" But it is not made clear lthat Urquhart saw the wonder with his own eyes. which is pretty strong evi- dence that he did not.
 According to Napier's own descrip- ton. it was shot which ranged abroad within the whole appointed space not departing forth till it had executed it's whole strength by de- stroying those that be within the bounds of the said place" The discov- erer of logarithms was a most respon- sible parsonage, whose assertions are not to be lightly dismissed; but we really cannot accept this, Another in vention was mirror like that of Arch imedes, but improved to reflsct artifi- cial fire" A third was a closed and fortified carriage to bring arquebuseers into the midst of the enemy, Yet an- other was ia device for sailing under water" but perhaps he did not com plete this, which is numbered among the "strategems for harming the enemy which by the grace of God and the work of expert craftsmen hope to per form.'' On his deathbed, however, Merchiston refused to tell the secret of these machines, saying that ..too many devices for the ruin and overthrow of man have been framed already" This was the last year of the sixteenth cen tury. Two of the inventions described are actually in use now-arfnor- plated carriages and submarine boats-but we dare not conclude, unfortunately, that Napier foresetalled modern science three hundred years ago. So contem- porary account of Sir William Petty's wonderful discoveries mentions Ia wheele to run races with. This looks very like bicycle, but in fact no doubt 1 it was the hobby" which. overlooked for generations, on a sudden b ecame ''the rage' in the beginning of the last jcentury--a wheel propelled by the ri-