CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
WAR AND TELEGRAPHY.
NEARLY WRECKED.
GEMS AT RANDOM STRUNG.
THE INN AT BOLTON.
ROCKBOUND.
THE MONTH: SCIENCE AND ARTS.
A FEARFUL SWING.
TO MY ROBIN REDBREAST.
| No. 726. | SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1877. | Price 1½d. |
WAR AND TELEGRAPHY.
It is vexing, even saddening, to think how large anamount of discovery, invention, and skill is appliedto the murderous purposes of war. As we advancein civilisation, armies become larger and larger,and more abundantly supplied with agencies wewould willingly see devoted to more peaceful purposes.Whether wars of race, wars of creed, warsof ambition, or wars of national vanity, the resultis much about the same in this respect. Someconsolers tell us that wars by-and-by will becomeso terrible as to check the desire to wage them: letus hope so, despite present symptoms.
Science has unquestionably rendered a vastamount of aid to attack and defence in war withinthe last few years. Gunpowder, gun-cotton, dynamite,and other explosive substances for fire-arms,torpedoes, and military mining have had theirproperties and relative powers investigated withremarkable completeness. Gun-carriages have beenso vastly improved, that by Captain Scott's contrivancesa six-hundred-pounder can be managedas easily and quickly as a thirty-two-poundercould in the days of our fathers or grandfathers;while by Major Moncrieff's automatic apparatus agun lowers itself behind the screen of a parapetor earthen battery for loading, and then raises itselftwelve or fifteen feet to fire over it.
Photography, again, is applied in a great varietyof ways to aid warlike operations. At the office ofthe Ordnance Survey, or under the supervision ofthe Director, an amazing number of such photographsare taken, enlarged or reduced from theoriginal dimensions according to circumstances, andmultiplied or prepared for printing by a veryrapid process of zincography or some other kindof electro-engraving. One of the Reports issuedby the Director tells us that he supplies the WarOffice with photographs of plans of battles, importantfortified posts and their surrounding districts,barracks and forts in all parts of the British dominions,&c. All the equipments of troops for thefield are similarly photographed or zincographed,as unerring patterns for reference. For such warsas we have been engaged in during the past five-and-twentyyear