It begins to look as if the days of gunpowder as a charge for the guns in the British navy were numbered. Recent experiments at the government proof butts, "Woolwich, appear to prove the decided superiority of cordite. A six-inch quick firing gun was loaded with twenty-nine pounds twelve ounces of the ordinary black gunpowder and yielded a velocity of 2,890 feet per second, with a pressure strain on the gun of fifteen tons per square inch. The same gun was charged with fourteen pounds three ounces of cordite, and gave a velocity of 2,274 feet per second, and a pressure of 15.2 tons. More important still, after 250 rounds had been fired there were no signs of erosion. The new substance is manufactured by the English government, and contains fifty-six percent of nitro-glycerine, thirty-seven of gun cotton and five of mineral jelly. The velocity of the shot along the bore of the six-inch gun was calculated to the millionth of a second from the first moment of being set in motion. Minute as they may appear, Lieut. H. Watkin, R. A., has invented an instrument which, it is said, will measure fractions of time to the nine-billionth part of a second! About fifty of the six-inch quick-firing guns have been supplied to the navy, and the authorities at the Royal Gun Factories have begun the manufacture of the larger guns of the same pattern, with a velocity of 1,300 miles per hour.