A TERRIBLE ENGINE OF DESTRUCTION.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VII, Issue 2022, 22 June 1885, Page 2

A TERRIBLE ENGINE OF DESTRUCTION.

If certain experiments recently made in Washington may be accepted as final, it is clear that the art of war is once more to bo completely revolutionised. Hitherto it has been supposed that dynamite projectiles are out of the question, because the sudden jar upon the startling of the shell wouldexplode jts contents. 'J'liia, however, has been found to be' not the case. Several Gin. shells, each containing nearly lift of nitro-glycerine, have beeni|red at Washington, and there was no trouble whatever from premature explosion. The destructive effect of the shells meanwhile was astonishing, One shell, fired at a perpendicular wall ofrqck from over 1000 yards distance, "shattered the face of the rock for a radius of thirty yards;" another "opened a, oavity of about 25ft in diameter, and excavated a pit Gft deep," In the next experiments 8-inch shells, carrying 351b of nitro-glyoerine, are to be use, and if their results inorease in proportion, there need be no limit to the destructive powers of the new projectiles. It is much to be hoped that the experiments will be successful, for then the millennium would be at hand, since war. would be so destructive that it would have to be abandoned.