Here is a great mistake. The law of projectiles is not wanted to prove its fallacy; the laws of motion will do that. If you take any number of equal or dissimilar sizes of shot, and place it as a charge is placed in a gun barrel, occupying 3/4 of an inch of tube, there is, of course, a wadding between powder and shot; this wadding is, or ought to be, a piston; velocity is communicated to this piston by the explosion; it does so to the shot immediately above it, that to the layers above, and so on until the whole mass is in motion. The velocity behind the piston is increasing to a certain point, where it ceases; then it is that the layer farthest from the piston, having received its maximum from the layers below, travels quicker than its assistants; who, having parted with their force, fall behind in proportion: so does each layer, even until the last one which received it from the piston, having communicated so much to his friends before him, is left without himself. It is an undisputed law in motion that one body may convey to another, by contact, nearly its own velocity, but in so doing, is sure to come to rest immediately. Strike one billiard ball against another, if the blow is centrical, the ball struck receives the motion, the other comes to rest; and so is it with shot: it is only the layers next the muzzle which strikes the target, the remainder fall without travelling the same distance. I have fired three balls from a rifle, and having marked them I found the uppermost projected farthest, and the others in proportion. This is easily proved. Thus, it is quite clear that in all charges of mixed shot, the larger will extract the velocity from the smaller, and consequently become useless for the purpose intended: this fact is unquestionable. In speaking of the longest duck or swivel guns, I may instance Colonel Hawker’s account of the performance of such fowling artillery. It appears evident that they do not effect anything like the execution which might be expected from their immense size and capability. The reason of this is obvious. From the great space of the interior, in order to receive that equal pressure on the inch which a common fowling-piece receives, they should be charged in proportion to the increased size; but then, I scarcely need add, they would become ungovernable. In addition to this objection, they could not be forged of malleable iron, so as to be safe; on account of the impossibility of forging a barrel of that weight by hand hammers, and the little probability of hammers ever being invented to work by steam to do it sufficiently quick. The greater the weight of the barrel its strength is gradually decreased, owing to the impossibility of sufficiently beating it throughout the whole body.