he armor.

The Italians and Germans claim to have accomplished the desired result
up to a thickness of five inches of armor; gun-cotton and fuse both
working well. But the English authorities say that no one has yet
accomplished it. The Austrians claim to have succeeded in this
direction within the last year with a new explosive called ecrastite
(supposed to be blasting gelatine combined with sulphate or
hydrochlorate of ammonia, and claimed to be one and one-half times as
powerful as dynamite).

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