The direction of immediate improvement In ordnance for iron-clad warfare appears to be the abandonment of cast-iron, except as a barrel to be strengthened by steel; binding an inner tube with low-steel hoops having a successively increasing initial tension; and the use of spherical shot at excessive velocities by means of high charges of powder in bores of moderate diameters. The rifling of some guns is important, not so much to secure range or accuracy, as to fire elongated shells through armor.
The direction of improvement in ironclad vessels appears to be the concentration of armor at a few points and the protection of the remainder of the vessel from the entrance of water by a streak of armor at the water-line and numerous bulkheads, etc., in distinction from necessarily thin and inefficient plating over all; high speed without great increase of weight of the driving parts, by means of improved engines and boilers and high pressure; the production of tenacious iron in large, thick, homogeneous masses; and the rapid manoeuvring of heavy ordnance by machinery.
In justice to himself, the writer deems it proper to state, that within the limits of a magazine-article it has been impossible to enter into the details, or even to give an outline, of all the facts which have led him to the foregoing conclusions. In a more extended work about to be published by Van Nostrand, of New York, he has endeavored, by presenting a detailed account of English and American experiments, a description and numerous illustrations, derived mostly from personal observation, of all classes of ordnance and armor and their fabrication, and of iron-clad vessels and their machinery, and a résumé of the best professional opinions, to add something at least usefully suggestive to the general knowledge on this subject.
ANDREW RYKMAN'S PRAYER.
Andrew Rykman's dead and gone:
You can see his leaning slate
In the graveyard, and thereon
Read his name and date.
"Trust is truer than our fears,"
Runs the legend through the moss,
"Cain is not in added years,
Nor in death is loss."
Still the feet that thither trod,
All the friendly eyes are dim;
Only Nature, now, and God
Have a care for him.
There the dews of quiet fall,
Singing birds and soft winds stray:
Shall the tender Heart of All
Be less kind than they?
What he was and what he is
They who ask may haply find,
If they read this prayer of his
Which he left behind.
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