MODERN EXPLOSIVES.

Kumara Times, Issue 1045, 5 February 1880, Page 4

MODERN EXPLOSIVES.

Old-fashioned people, whose acquaintance with explosives is confined to a knowledge of gunpowder, have been startled by the appearance of late years of a whole army of new fangled compounds, the names of which are alone sufficient to puzzle any ordinarily constituted mind. Guhcotton, nitro-glycerine dynamite, litho-fracteur, cotton powder, tonite, glononine, dualine, saxafragine, mataziette, {glyoxiline, and blasting gelatine are among the name by which these new explosives have been brought forward ; and to those little versed in such matters it seems well nigh hopeless Jto attempt to keep pace in one's knowledge with a class of compounds that every day grows more and more extensive. Gun cotton is a nitro-compounct in a solid form; nitro-glycerine is a nitrocompound in aliquid form, and but of these two the whole series mentioned consists. Cotton powder is guncotton reduced to a fine state of division ; and tonite is the same, with the admixture of nitrate of similar body ; dynamite is clay or other earth saturated with nitroglycerine ; and litho-fracteur, roughly speaking is the same thing, with a little saltpetre and Bulphnr added. Dualine is granules of gun cotton soaked in nitroglycerine ; and blasting gelatine is not gelatine at all, but nitro-glycerine in which gun cotton has been dissolved so as to form a sort of jelly. There is a yet more novel explosive compound—the newest of all—which consists of adding to this "gelatine" a further quantity of guncotton, making a sort of dough, whose destructive properties seen to combine < those of guncotton and nitro-glycerine. Glonoine is simply another name for nitro-glycerine ; and saxafragine and matazietfce are aliases for dynamite, So that we really come down to two these, namely, guncotton and nitro-glycerine; and these may according to that excellent publication Science for AH, from which we extract these particulars, be regarded as the same, with the exception that one ia solid and the other liquid.