A gentleman direct from Baltimore, and who has seen the steam-gun (about which considerable has been said) operate, has furnished us with the following description of it:
It is on four wheels; the boiler is like that of an ordinary steam fire engine, the cylinder being upright. There is but one barrel, which is of steel, on a pivot, and otherwise is like an ordinary musket barrel. It is fed or loaded through a hopper entering the barrel directly over the pivot. The barrel has a rotary motion, and performs the circumference, by machinery attached, at the rate of about sixteen hundred times a minute. The balls are let into the barrel through a valve at will, and every time the barrel comes round to a certain point, another valve, self-operated, lets out a ball, which is propelled solely by the velocity of the barrel in revolving.
It will discharge a two-ounce ball three hundred times a minute. The range is accurate up and down, but the balls are liable to hit wide of the mark on one side or the other. The barrel revolves inside of a drum, made of boiler iron, between five and six feet in circumference, with an opening where the balls are discharged. Its range is not over one hundred yards at best, and the gun can be worked so as to discharge in any direction. The whole thing weighs 6,700 lbs., and is about the size of a steam fire engine. It is the opinion of our informant that the gun does not warrant the expectations of the inventor, and that it is not likely to be of much service.
The Lansing State Republican, Lansing, MI