We must reduce this enormous quantity of powder, keeping at the same time its mechanical power." "Good! By what means ?" "I will tell you," answered Barbicane simply.
His interlocutors all looked at him.
"Nothing is easier, in fact," he resumed, "than to bring that mass of powder to a volume four times less.

You all know that curious cellular matter which constitutes the elementary tissues of vegetables ?" "Ah!" said the major, "I understand you, Barbicane." "This matter," said the president, "is obtained in perfect purity in different things, especially in cotton, which is nothing but the skin of the seeds of the cotton plant.

Now cotton, combined with cold nitric acid, is transformed into a substance eminently insoluble, eminently combustible, eminently explosive.

Some years ago, in 1832, a French chemist, Braconnot, discovered this substance, which he called xyloidine.

In 1838, another Frenchman, Pelouze, studied its different properties; and lastly, in 1846, Schonbein, professor of chemistry at Basle, proposed it as gunpowder.