If Bullets Were of Butter

1903

Curious Phenomena of Penetration of Glass By Soft Objects

Somebody — probably that indefatigable interviewer, Lord Mahon — once asked the Duke of Wellington why Souham did not press him more closely in that terrible retreat from Bourgos in 1812, during which, out of a total of about 31,000 men, he lost 7,000 by disease, straggling and desertion. "Because," he replied, "the French had learned that our bullets were not made of butter!" No doubt they were very awkward "pats," those terrible leaden spheres, weighing twelve to the pound, which Brown Bess spread with such deadly result up to her effective range of a little over 100 yards, and the lesson had been read to French conscripts upon many a bloody field. What would have been the bill of mortality had these bullets really been made of butter? An idle question, it may seem, yet one upon which I was set cogitating the other day by a singular incident.

Returning one evening to my own house. I noticed a large round hole in the plate glass window of the library, as if a football had been driven through it. There were no boys about, or the cause might have been such as saute aux veux. Upon reaching the library, I found the floor covered with shattered glass, showing that the impact had been from the outside, but nothing was visible within to account for it. The hole in the plate glass window of the library was as if a football had been driven through the window frame.

More puzzled than ever, I summoned my better half to discuss the problem. She, being of a practical turn, began looking under the furniture for the agent of destruction; while I stood idle, considering such search superfluous, mutely speculating how the deuce a plate glass window was to be replaced in a remote corner of western Scotland. For, mark ye, it was in the first days of the recent frost, and a keen north wind was blowing through the orifice. Presently my wife exclaimed: "Here it is, poor thing!" Between a large arm chair and the fireplace crouched a hen pheasant, which I caught. It showed no wound or sign of damage and straggled vigorously to get free. When it was released upon the terrace it flew a short distance, alighted, ran away strongly and was seen no more. It seems to me very remarkable that a bird should fly uninjured through plate glass as simply as a circus rider jumps through a paper hoop. One has always been told that any man of ordinary strength can drive his fist through a door panel. The only one whom I ever knew to attempt it succeeded, indeed, but at the cost of a dislocated little finger knuckle. It was explained to him that if he had aimed at a point a foot behind the panel instead of at the panel itself, his hand would have passed through without a scratch. But who is there of fortitude to put that to the test? How often has one not cause to wonder at the thickness and strength of an oaken rail through which the slender cannonbone of a horse may be driven, often without an abrasion of the skin. Reverse the process; let the horse's leg be stationary; and the oaken rail be driven against it at high velocity, and who can doubt which would be shattered?

A signal example of the imperious nature of momentum was given a few years ago, when a horse ran off with his rider in the Mall or Constitutional Hill (I forget which), charged the high iron railings in front of Buckingham palace, made a clean breach in them, and both landed unhurt within the inclosure. Force is undoubtedly one of the most intangible, inexplicable of mysteries. One is warned against the use of anthropomorphic terms in discussing it, which tend to divert the intellect from precise analysis, and we are bidden to regard it as no more than the rate per unit of length at which energy is transferred or transformed. But this carries the ordinary mind not very far, in fact, no distance at all, in apprehending what avails in the transference of energy from a soft substance to a hard one, to protect from injury such vulnerable surfaces as the skin on a horse's leg against oak or iron, or a hen pheasant's head against plate glass. — Herbert Maxwell in London Pall Mall Gazette.