iscussion of the committee. The most simple preparations for the great experiment, the questions of figures which it involved, the

tion was suddenly intensifie

nst the attempt of the Gun Club. He attacked it furiously on every opportunity, and human nature is such that Barbicane felt more keenly the opposition of that one man than he did the applause of a

two men would certainly have been attended with serious consequences. This rival was a man of science, like Barbicane him

ontinents; as the one grew heavier, the other became thicker in proportion. The Merrimac, the Monitor, the Tennessee, the Weehawken discharged enormous projectiles themselves, after having been ar

lowed a current of ideas essentially opposed to the other. Happily for these citizens, so useful to their country, a distance of from fifty to sixty miles separated them from one another, and they had never yet met. Which of these two inventors had the advan

rger then believed himself victorious, and could not evince contempt enough for his rival; but when the other afterward substituted for conical shot sim

mor-plate of wrought steel. It was a masterpiece of its kind, and bid defiance to all the projectiles of the world. The captain had it conveyed to th

of any shot, solid, hollow, round, or conical. Refused by the

every chance. He proposed to fix the plate within two hundred yards of the gu

through the newspapers. "At twenty

f Captain Nicholl would be so good as to s

who refused to fire a cannon-shot was pretty near being afraid of it; that artillerists wh

r; perhaps he never heard of them, so absorbed wa

bsolute impotence. How was he to invent anything to beat this 900-feet Columbiad? What armor-plate could ever resist a projectile of 30,000 pounds

,000 yards per second; that even with such a velocity a projectile of such a weight could not transcend the limits of the earth's atmosphere. Further still, even regarding the velocity to be acquired, and granting it to be sufficient, the shell could not resist the pressure of

his work without reg

wns in the neighborhood of this deplorable cannon. He also observed that if the projectile did not succeed in reaching its destination (a result absolutely impossible), it must inevitably fall back upon the earth, and that the shock of such a mass, multiplied by the square of its ve

y listened to him, and he did not succeed in alienating a single admirer from the president

the cause, resolved to fight with money. He published, therefore, in the Richmond

ry funds for the experiment of th

casting a cannon of 900 feet is impra

Columbiad, and that the pyroxyle will take fire s

the Columbiad will b

farther than six miles, and that it will fall

the captain risked in his invincible obsti

on the 19th of May he received a sealed packet

ORE, Oc

on

BICA