A NEW GUNPOWDER.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume IX, Issue 466, 1 April 1867, Page 3

A NEW GUNPOWDER.

Every day some new discovery is being made in the instruments and appliances of war, and the last invention premises certainly not to be ono of the least impor tant. A Swiss inventor has discovered an explosive compound wuicli we believe has been offered for experiment to our VVar Odice authorities. It consists of a powder, the ingredients of which are as yet unknown, as they are the secret of the inventor This powder is intended to bt used only as a bursting charge for shells or for explosive rifle ballets ; in fact it CiiH bt) U3£Ci hm 5 for pvppv KrtOftj r-h of projectile, and its force is so great Iliai a bullet enurged with it and tired from the ordinary Enlield rifle satiices to blow up the caisson of an artillery wageon. Wbai its etfect would be when forming the charge of the hollow projec.iles of the heavier species of ordnance is as yet un-

k nown, aa it has uofc hitherto been experimented upon on a large scale, but judging from that produced by the very small quantity of tbe powder contained in a hollow missile fired from the ordinary rifle, it must prove a terrible engine of destruction. Although possessing such formidable explosive powers, the composition is, in its ordinary condition, one of the safest known, as it only explodes when the hollow projectile charged with it strikes some object when fired from a rifle ora piece of ordnance ; even the shell does not burst till it has penetrated the substance against which it strikes.* A bullet charged with this substance can be flung about and struck without any explosion resulting from the roughest treatment; upon being thrown into afire the bullet will be fused, and no explosion ensues. (Jeon the powder being placed upon a sheet of paper and a light applied to it, it burns slowly and without noise, nearly in the same manner as would a similar quantity of common sulphur. The mode of using it is extremely simple, as it is simply poured into the shell till it is well filled with it, and the orifice through which it was introduced is then stopped up In the manner that seems most convenient—in the case of a rifle bullet, for instance, with a piece of wax. No fuse is required to determine the ignition of tho shell. One of its most important qualities, however, is. that by adding to or diminishing one of tho ingredients, tho explosion of the shell, after striking, may be retarded or accelerated, so that in firing, we shall -ay, at an iron-plated ship of war, it may bo so arranged as to explode either between decks, after having penetrated the side, or in the side of the vessel itself, and the breach made by such a formidable mine would, most probably, utterly destroy or sink the vessel.

It is to be hoped that such an extraordinary discovery will be duly inquired into, and there is little doubt that if it is, trout experiments that have already taken phes abroad, this new power of destruction will be au important addition to our land, and above all to our marine artil*