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8$6 TtE IE ADEI,, f ]SFo/486. July 16, 1...
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AN ESSAY ON THE CAUSE OF RAIN AND ITS AL...
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A Tour 12? Dalmatia, Albania, And Monten...
tasselled cap , their loose fcrdusers blue , -with red edgings , and a red waistcoat , with jacket slung on litisaar fashfon . The women ' s heads were coveted witi * white kerchiefs , bordered with a red stripe or hem , thrown loosely fan ; a * ** they wore purple polkas trimmed with red , purple " brilOj" Or petticoat , and their opankes laced With scarlet . All the peasantry on this coast , fifona ; Fiume ftichisive , wear , not shoes , but the opankes , Which is made of a sort of vmtanned ( but otherwise prepared ) hide , tied on with thones , the sole projecting beyond the
A TREATISE ON BIFIiE PROJECTII * ES--in which the ; apparent anomalies and contradictions exhibited in ' the penetration of elongated * ifle bulleta are accounted for , & c . By Jolin Boucher ; formerly of the ^ th Dragoon Guards . —C . and E . L . ayt 6 h . We hope we may still say this brochure conies most opportunely . For though-r-the imperial vultures having re-partitioned Italy , and English diplomacy laving happily no foothold in the arrangement—the Mercadets of London and all Europe will be in ecstasies at the hopes long de ^ - ferred of preying upon the succulent class of
victims usually forthcoming in times of peace ; - — though the sound of the armourer ' s forge be stilled for awhile . ;—though Admiralty officials may let fleets rot untroubled , and \ Var Office clerks slay then * tens of thousands a la mode ;—though the exposure of Sir John Pakington ' s shameful practice in re Trotman ' s anchor will fall on dull ears;—though , the aristocracy of Britain and their flunkeys will spare no pains to damp the military spirit just evoked among our people in spite of them ;—we hope we may still see the self organisation of the people , for their own defence , take rank among accomplished facts . The time of peace , is the Feneible ' s time of preparation . In peace time alone—or at least deliberately—notwithstanding the incredibly short time in which they can master
belief that a bullet gains velocity after leaving the muzzle of a pieceU He concludes with an inquiry into the nature and true causes of the expansion of the bullet into the-grooyes , and the " American feed bore system . " This , like the sections preceding , are as interesting to the well informed , or would-be well-informed general reader , as we have before stated them to be necessary to the generality of professional officersapd the large body of embryo riflemen Who are now digesting information of all kinds on the subject .
company drill and manual' exercise- —can they become accomplished shots ; In peace time alone can they hope to Overcome the-gravest obstacle to the formation of a real national guard— -we mean the engineering difficulty of procuring the rikles : a difficulty : that , had the war continued , would soon have assumed such proportions as to neutralise , or at least dwarf , the proportions of all grand schemes for voluntary national defence . By all means we hope that , / whatever sport may be made of peaceful soldiers—playful soldiers , holiday soldiers , & c . & c .. —our embryo National Guards will deeline the invitations they will receive to stand " as they were . "
Mr . Busk has gathered , as far as the book market goes , the cream Of the trade due to the rifle movement , but has barely touched upon the philosophy of rifle shootingi which , after all , must be skimmed , if not fathomed , by all aspirants who would be prominent members of rifle clubs in other respects than , the vanities of uniform or the mechanism of drill . The author is clearl y a man who has not the pernicious , though easy-going , habit of taking anything for granted . His tractj which is not a long one , evinces considerable research into the science of projectiles , and Jhis investigations
below the foundations of prevalent dogmas tend to show that these are sometimes loose and sometimes untenable . W " e are not about to favour the readers of a weekly newspaper with such an essay on the subject as should fairly treat the more interesting and important points discussed by the author ; but in these times of military fervour all should know that among practical men there are very grave doubts whether the Minie is the queen of weapons at all , notwithstanding the fact that the national storehouses groan with different varieties of that arm . The delay of our red-tapists to adopt novelties is no less remarkable than the impudent
tenacity with whioh they refuse to acknowledge the progress of invention . When they have been forced to make one move they seem to us to lay down like exhausted prize pigs , who look determined never to rise again . Mr . Boucher is a practical man , and a neat experimentalist . As an objector to the finality of the MiniC shot he is in very good company ; , and ho has done more than object , for he lias devised a form of projectile which looks so well in theory that we would fain hear more of it . The difficulty , ho believes , resolved itself into the production of a cylindro-conoidal bullet ; with a flat surface for its base and the centre
of gravity in the fore part . The difficulty was not of course to find a shot that should meet these requirements , but in tracking and hunting down the theory through the maze of practical and scientific obstacles that surround it , and which have been too much for many of the eminent military men -who , with ample' convictions that something was wanting , have not been able to discover what that " something was . " An ingenious mechanical enginoer , Mr . Heseltine , with this view , among others , patented , in 1854 , a shot , with which -we have seen excellent practice at long ranges , but was * baffled , of course , in the slight attempts to made to introduce it , by the strong defences of routine , The author next attacks the common
foot , and admirably suited to protect it on these stony hills . Zara is now the provincial Austrian seat of Government , and is said to contain 2 , 000 employes in a population of 5 , 000 Or 6 , 000 . One of the most interesting portions of the work before us , is the description of the remains of Diocletian ' s Palace at Bua ; but our space will not permit of its citation . The ruins of Salonse , also , invite attention , but we are compelled to refer the reader to the book . The information given of Ragusa is tie most valuable : —
" Ragusa , the last of the middle-age republics ; the little free state , which boasted Cadmus and Hermione its progenitors , the Xacedemonians as its . founders , the Romans as its colonists ; which counted Greek emperors , Slave bans , Norman ^ dukes , Hungarian kings , Spanish potentates ^ Turkish . sultans at different epochs , the popes always as its protectors ; the parent of Gondola , Pahnqtta , and Giorgi , ; the fosterer of a school of Latin , Italian , and Slave ¦ writers , which flourished through four or five centuries ; the scene , of the fatal earthquake in the
fieventeenth century ; the oligarchical republic , whose protracted history is epitomised in its font names , Epidaurus of the Greeks and Romans , Rausium of the Byzantines , Dubrownik ofthe Slaves , and Ragusa of all the rest , in more modern times ; which retained its oyra . form of Government from its earliest days" quite into the nineteenth dfentury , and some years beyond the term allotted to its powerful " Venetian rival , surrendering at last to the gigantic power of Napoleon I ., after so many centuries of independence . "
The state of society in Albania is painted in dark colours . IN " othing apparently can be worse . The Account of Scutari is amusing : — ' * . By this time it was dark ; and when , for nearly another hour ,, we kept on still traversing the same Mnd of pavement as before , now between high walls , now among gravestones , still seeing no houses , I at length inquired with much naivete , and to the guide ' s no . small amazement , when we should reach Scutari , and received for answer , to my no less astonishment , that it had been Scutari ever since we left the Bazaar I Where , then , were the houses ? Xowxoofed and-wide-spread , they were completely concealed from our kep , as we passed along , by their
garden , or , more strictly speaking , orchard walls , witban which each was enclosed . Thus widely does Scutari differ from Antiyari ; the latter remains as it was when a Christian town , but the former , cramped by no city walls , and arranged after Turkish notions , has all the air of an Oriental city transplanted into Europe . In short , I seemed to be always in the suburbs . And , as no artificial light from that Ijlory of modern civilisation , gas , or even from the more primitive lamp or candle , assisted the eye to < lispel its illusion , so neither , though wo were Actually penetrating into a city of many thousand inhabitants , and the capital of a pashalic , did the ear reveal its proximity . "
The barbansmof the Montenegrins has many illustrations in this volume ; but with too many a eet ofT in the practice of the Turks . The history of Ragusa , with which this production concludes , is remarkably interesting . Its relations with Venice Are treated in a , fair and liberal spirit ; it derived from them , no doubt , signal advantages ; among them a higher rate of civilisation and commercial prosperity . The inherent evil of Ragusan institutions was their exclusively aristocratic nature . This , however , did not exclude literary eminence . The alave poets of Ragusa are greatly celebrated t
they were , too , the earliest who wrote in that tongue . Zucoari , a native historian , mentions how one of the Narontan princes , in the tenth century , was induced to protect the Rogusans by their ballads . J ? qetry was brought to perfection about 1610 by Giovanni Gondola , member of an illustrious and patrician family . His groat work is the " Qsmanid , * a poem in twenty- ^ two cantos , of sevenujiundred lines each , and which has been ranked WWfc Tasso ' s * Jerusalem ? ' The poets of Ragusa ore chiefly religious ; and it is remarkable ' for ifca aahorenoeto tho Ctawdvwhiah Ms been undev * ftting .
8$6 Tte Ie Adei,, F ]Sfo/486. July 16, 1...
8 $ 6 TtE IE ADEI ,, f ] SFo / 486 . July 16 , 1859 .
An Essay On The Cause Of Rain And Its Al...
AN ESSAY ON THE CAUSE OF RAIN AND ITS ALLIED PHENOMENA . By G . A Rowell , Honorary Member or" the Ashmolean Society . —Oxford : Published and sold by the author , No . 3 , Alfred-street ,. St . Giles . Tee writer Of this essay is one of the working classes- —a paper-hanger , with small opportunities of leisure , but who husbands them for scientific uses . The theory which has procured him , workman as he is , honour among , scientific men , and membership in a scientific society , occurred to him in early youth ; and the idea has strengthened , and grown , and ripened into maturity and manhood . < " At first a spark
Deep buried in his soul , then blazed abroad , Wakening a spirit able to support , Even to the end , the energy of faith . " Such a mind is to be treated with respect , and the perserverance that it exemplifies must necessarily command it . The author ' s notions first assumed literary shape in a paper read at a meeting of the Ashmolean Society , 1839 , containing "Conjectures on the Cause of Rain , Storms , the Aurora , and Magnetism ; with a suggestion for causing Rain at-will . " This suggestion , as might have been expected , alarmed the timid , perhaps provoked the sniile of the contemptuous . His plan
for producing rain consisted in raising electric conductors to the regions of the clouds by the aid of captive balloons- To carry out—this project , Mr . Rowell was induced to make scientific investigations oh the subject of rain , and particularly in regard to <• electricity . The existing theories of evaporation appeared to him to be unsatisfactory . He learned , however , from them that ice requires 140 deg . of heat to convert it into water . He found it , however , difficult to believe that particles
of ice , when surrounded by a freezing atmosphere , can absorb enough heat , not only to convert them into water , but to make them upwards of 800 times lighter than that fluid , which they must be to render them buoyant in air , even in its lower stratum . At the height of three miles the air is 1 , 716 times lighter than water , and its temperature as low as . 9 dog . of Fahrenheit ; while the expansion of stieam from boiling water is not more than 1 , 800 times . Now , Mr . Rowell thinks that a true theory would meet all cases .
Connected with Mr . Rowell ' s argument is the question , whether electricity be or ,., not material ? This question he debates with much modesty , but decides it in the affirmative . According to him , electricity occupies space , however small , and is not therefore merely a condition ox force , but an effect . He is not sure , however , that it is ponderable ; at all events , its weight is unappreciable . One ground that he gives for his assumption that electricity occupies space , is , that a body may be charged with electricity , under the pressure ofthe atmosphex'e , but that no charge pf any consequence can be retained on any body in
vacuo , or in highly rarified air . " Thus , ho states , appears to demonstrate that electricity- is sufficiently gross to be pressed on and restrained by the pressure of tho atmosphere . Moreover , the results of lightning , or the electric spark , seem to show that something passes . A cortiun degree of intensity being obviously nocessary to overcome the resistance of the air , there must bo something to be resisted . In nice manner , the results of electricity in motion tend to prove this same ,. as its . passage is free and rapid through conductors ,
if of sufficient capacity ; but if too small , they are heated , fused , or dissipated , while non-conductors are invariably more or less damaged . Is not also the electric spark the effect of tlto compression of the air , from the real passage of electricity through it , since the intensity of the light is in accordance with the density ofthe air in which it is produced P —^ another proof of tho materiality of the electric fluig L it being inexplicable otherwise by what the compression is produced . However , no satisfactory test can bo applied , and no amount of elec-
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), July 16, 1859, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_16071859/page/18/
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