The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-12-13

DIAAANNAAAA~e' der carriages.
 Monster cannon were an early form of extravaganza in military weapons. There are several accounts of such pieces of ordnance. A traveller in 174S stated that he had seen at Brunswick a gun or rather mortar cast in All. ItI was made of brass, was ten feet six inches long and no less than nine feet two inches in diameter, and was said tod be capable of throwing a one thousand pound shell. India boasted several of these monstrosities. OOne still to be seen at Kubberpore is said to be no less than twenty-one feet three inches long and five feet six inches around the muzzle. It is called Jaun Kusball, or destroyer of life, by the natives and was probably cast somewhere in Per sia.
 Another Indian piece, cast by Chule- by Koomy, Kahn of Ahmednuggeer, 1 about the year t50O, has such a tremen- dous bore that the interior is now fitted up as kind of summer house. A can non made at Bruges in 1S4S had square bore and fired eubical shot. Guns were made of all kinds of materi- als, though all such may be regarded as freaks or experiments. The leather guns invented by an officer in the army of Gustavus Adolphus had certain vogue on account of their lighness. Some were effectively used against us by the Scots under General Leslie at the battle of Newburn Ford in 1640. They were made by wrapping rope and twine around copper cylinders strength ened by iron rings They were then coated with plaster, and finally coveredi with leather. They were very portable, but unreliable and short lived. Guns have been made of wood hoped with iron, not only in ancient times, but quite recently in the Philippines, where they were used against the American troops.
 The Chinese had q gun made of ban1- boo in 1259, but only the other day the Japahese were making effective use of wooden mortars bound around with bamboo for throwing explosives into the Russian works at the siege of Port Arthur. Guns have been made of glass and even of ice. Some of the latter, made for saluting purposes at the mar riage of the Russian Prince GallitZi In 1799, are stated to have been fired more than once without bursting" Guns have even been made of the pre- cious metals. In 1863 there was in the arsenal of Verona "a great gun found in Candid, all of gold and silver" A ot DaIrin in 1860, and King Thebaw of Burma was the possessor of another, which was also incrusted with precious stones. The early caliver was little in ferior to a cannon in clumsiness, as 1t ! took three men to carry it and fourth to fire 1t.
 When firearms became somewhat more portable, and especially when pis- tols were introduced, we find them fashions. Shields or targets not infre- quently had pistol fixed in the center with a small grating for aiming through, but there is an account of shield at Genoa which had na less than one hundred and twenty pistols con- nected with it. Rather heavy affair l to handle, one would imagine. The Emperor Charles V, had a curious shieldt which he carried when walking about at night; "a spear came out of the side of it, besides that in the mid dle; if any thrust was made at the shield the swords point was catched and broken"
 | Another surprising mediaeval contri- vance was an iron hat or helmet, which | is described as having two crowns, each with four pistols" A volley of eight shots from an opponents head piece must have been very disconcert
 ng-probably to all parties concerned, A curious mortar in the Tower of Lon- don is square in front and has no less than nine separate bores. The eigh
 teenth century was distinctly the epoch of sieges. The attack and defence of 1 carefully fortified places was carried out in the most methodical and patient mannes.
 There were many inventions at that 1 time especially applicable to the at tack and defence of fortified towns
 The petard was much used. It consist 1 ed of bell shaped iron receptacle filled with powder and clamped down to a block of hard wood It was intended to ] be fixed to doors and gates for the pur- 1 pose of blowing them in. Another de- vice was the pot feu or fire pot, which was a kind of ball or globular ] jar fillei with old tarred rope, which was thrown upon the enemy's works, to 1 light them up at night and enable fire | ito be directed upon them. Loaded pis- | tol barrels were attached to these to
 prevent any one from picking them up and extingushlng them. The pistol a
 reveille could be set to explode a mine
 at a given hour.
 But all said and done, we need not
 dive into the past to fin dextraordina- ] ry ideas and weird warlike appliances, Our modern inventors are quite capa- l ble of keeping up the supply. Leaving
 aside the steam guns, which were in 1 tended to spurt out stteams of bullets
 after the fashion of Maxim gun,
 which were invented by Perkins in 1924, | by Winans in the sos, and the very
 similar compressed air gun patented by one Sturgeon in 1887, none of which re-
 alized it's inventors expectations, we
 can find plenty of extraordinary con- 1 trivanceS.
 The wire bullet proof screen behind
 which the soldier advancing to the at
 tack defies any projectie smaller than
 a three-pounder is as far fetched an
 idea as anything produced in the mid