STEAM GUN

A contrivance by which balls, or other projectiles used in warlike operations, may be projected by the expansive force of steam. This invention, which is due to Mr. Jacob Perkins, an American mechanician, so well known for various ingenious and useful contrivances in the mechanical arts, having been fir.n brought forward since the general peace which succeeded the battle of Waterloo, has never been submitted to the test of actual experience either in military or naval ope i a tions, and consequently has not received the benefit of that stimulus to improvement which is always so nece ary to bring mechanical contrivances of a novel kind to perfection, an. which can only be derived from their prac- 1174 [s. 1188]