Whatever may have been the merits of this missile, it was certainly not a Shrapnel, as will be seen clearly by placing the details of construction of the two projectiles side by side. _Zimmermann’s Case_, 1573. | _Shrapnel’s Spherical Case_, 1805. | (_a_) A hollow leaden cylinder. |(_a’_) A hollow iron sphere. (_b_) Thickness of cylinder unknown. |(_b’_) Thickness of sphere a minimum.[555] (_c_) Contained a number of bullets.[556]|(_c’_) Contained a number of bullets. (_d_) Bursting charge a _maximum_. |(_d’_) Bursting charge a _minimum_. (_e_) Bullets accelerated by explosion |(_e’_) Bullets (as far as practicable) of bursting charge. | unaffected by explosion of | bursting charge. (_f_) A very bad fuze. |(_f’_) A tolerably fair fuze.[557] (_g_) Range up to 500-600 yds. |(_g’_) Range up to 3000 yds. The annals of Artillery will be ransacked in vain for Shrapnel shell before the nineteenth century, because the successful application of Shrapnel’s principle was impossible until an extremely accurate time fuze had been constructed, and no nation possessed a really good fuze before that epoch[558]—nor in truth until long afterwards. The results of the Shrapnel practice in 1819,[559] after Shrapnel and many others had devoted their best energies to the improvement of time fuzes for sixteen years, show how defective they still were. But although the want of a sufficiently accurate fuze made the Shrapnel system a practical impossibility before the nineteenth century, a man above his fellows might have dreamt dreams of distant case fire ages before.