This work was completed, a factory established, and the processes well marked out when I left the torpedo station in 1892. Besides this, there were then already commercial works established elsewhere in this country for the manufacture of the nitroglycerin-nitrocellulose powders of the ballistite class, while large quantities of many varieties could be easily procured abroad. Considering these facts, and that France and Germany had already adopted smokeless powders in 1887, that Italy adopted one in 1888, and England about the same time, it is unpardonable that our services should not yet have adopted any of the smokeless powders available when we were drawn into the conflict with Spain. Besides their use as ballistic agents, gun cotton, dynamite, and explosive gelatin in their ordinary condition have found employment and been adopted as service explosives in military and naval mining, as their great energy and the violence with which they explode, even when unconfined, especially adapt them for use in the various kinds of torpedoes and mines which are in vogue in the service. [Illustration: LAUNCHING PATRICK TORPEDO FROM THE WAYS.] One form of these torpedoes was attached to the end of a spar or pole which was rigged out from the bow of a launch or vessel so that it could be thrust under the enemy’s vessel, and the detonators of such spar torpedoes were not only connected with electric generators, so that they could be fired at will, but they, in common with mines, were frequently provided with a system of levers so arranged that the enemy’s vessel fired the torpedoes and mines automatically as it came in contact with the levers. It was with such a contact-spar torpedo, containing thirty-three pounds of gun cotton, that the schooner Joseph Henry was blown up in Newport Harbor in 1884. [Illustration: PATRICK TORPEDO UNDER WAY. Moving at the rate of twenty-three knots per hour.] There are many types of the automobile torpedo. Among them the Hall, Patrick, Whitehead, and Howell may be cited. The first three are propelled by the energy resident in compressed gases; the Howell by the energy stored in a heavy fly wheel, which also, by acting on the gyroscopic principle, serves to maintain the direction imparted to the torpedo as it is launched. The Hall, Whitehead, and Howell are launched from tubes or guns by means of light powder charges, and are independent of exterior control after launching. The Patrick is launched from ways, and is controlled from the shore or boat by a wire through which an electric current may be sent to its steering mechanism. The charges are quite variable, but the war heads of the larger torpedoes contain as much as five hundred pounds of gun cotton. [_To be concluded._] A PARADOXICAL ANARCHIST. BY PROF. CESARE LOMBROSO.