Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery; Illustration, Drollery

Relevant illustrations:

wdct.

Subjects:

Military Technology, War

People mentioned:

Archimedes

    Reports that some 'scientific folks' occupying an 'establishment at Fulham', 'issued a prospectus' undertaking to blow up schooners cheaply and annihilate fortresses quickly. Notes that the scheme is to be 'done by shells' but needs the public to 'shell-out as a preliminary', and that these scientific folks' 'benevolent object' is to 'put an end to war' by making it highly self-destructive. Punch observes that it is 'a rum idea to destroy life wholesale, for the purpose of saving it in detail'. The illustration shows a soldier pouring water from a watering-can onto a cannon—one way of 'destroying the enemy's guns'.