With a gun of 8.24 inches caliber and an armor-piercing shell weighing 206.6 pounds, containing a bursting charge of 15.88 pounds of ecrastite, they are said to have perforated two plates four inches thick, and entered a third four-inch plate where the shell exploded. There is a weak point in this account in the fact that the powder capacity of the shell is said to be 4.4 pounds. This amount is approximately correct, judging from our own eight-inch armor-piercing shell, but if this is true, there could not have been more than nine pounds of ecrastite in the shell instead of sixteen, or else there is an exceedingly small proportion of blasting gelatine in ecrastite, and if that is the case it is not one and one-half times as powerful as dynamite. If it is weak stuff, it is probably insensitive, and even if it were strong, one swallow does not make a summer. The English fired quantities of blasting gelatine from a two-inch Nordenfeldt gun in 1884, but when they tried it in a seven-inch gun, in 1885, they burst the gun at once. I have only analyzed this Austrian case, because the statement is taken from this year's annual report of the Office of Naval Intelligence, which is an excellent authority, and to illustrate the fact that of the thousands of accounts, which we see in foreign and domestic newspapers, concerning the successful use of high explosives in shells, fully ninety per cent. are totally unreliable. In many cases they are in the nature of a prospectus from the inventors of explosives or methods of firing, who are aware of the fact that it is almost impossible to dispute any statements that they may choose to make regarding the power of their new compounds, and thinking, as most of them do, that power alone is required. Referring to the qualities that I have previously cited as being required in a high explosive for military purposes, it is sooner or later found that nearly all the novelties proposed lack some of the essentials and soon disappear from the advertising world only to be succeeded by others. The most common defect is lack of keeping qualities. They will either absorb moisture or will evaporate; or further chemical action will go on among the constituents, making them dangerously sensitive or completely inert, or they will separate mechanically according to their specific gravities. For further clearness on the subject of the shell charges which have so far been discussed, the following table is added of weight and sizes of shells for United States naval guns, with their bursting charges of powder: 6-inch com. cast steel shell 31/2 to 4 cal. long, wt. 100 lb., charge 6 lb. 8 " " " " " 250 " 141/2 lb. 10 " " " " " 500 " 27 " 12 " " " " " 850 " 45 " ARMOR-PIERCING FORGED STEEL SHELL.