There was some talk at the Gun Club of making a solemn experiment with it.

But if the horses consented to play their part, the men unfortunately were wanting.
However that may be, the effect of these cannon was very deadly, and at each discharge the combatants fell like ears before a scythe.

After such projectiles what signified the famous ball which, at Coutras, in 1587, disabled twenty-five men; and the one which, at Zorndorff, in 1758, killed forty fantassins; and in 1742, Kesseldorf's Austrian cannon, of which every shot levelled seventy enemies with the ground?
What was the astonishing firing at Jena or Austerlitz, which decided the fate of the battle?
During the Federal war much more wonderful things had been seen.
At the battle of Gettysburg, a conical projectile thrown by a rifle-barrel cut up a hundred and seventy-three Confederates, and at the passage of the Potomac a Rodman ball sent two hundred and fifteen Southerners into an evidently better world.

A formidable mortar must also be mentioned, invented by J.T.Maston, a distinguished member and perpetual secretary of the Gun Club, the result of which was far more deadly, seeing that, at its trial shot, it killed three hundred and thirty-seven persons--by bursting, it is true.
What can be added to these figures, so eloquent in themselves?
Nothing.
So the following calculation obtained by the statistician Pitcairn will be admitted without contestation: by dividing the number of victims fallen under the projectiles by that of the members of the Gun Club, he found that each one of them had killed, on his own account, an average of two thousand three hundred and seventy-five men and a fraction.
By considering such a result it will be seen that the single preoccupation of this learned society was the destruction of humanity philanthropically, and the perfecting of firearms considered as instruments of civilisation.

It was a company of Exterminating Angels, at bottom the best fellows in the world.
It must be added that these Yankees, brave as they have ever proved themselves, did not confine themselves to formulae, but sacrificed themselves to their theories.