A POWERFUL ENGINE OF DES-

 TRUCTION.
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The London Times narrates the particu- lars of an experiment which was tried near that city in presence of Sir Rohrt Peel aad other distinguished personages, including number of military and naval gentlemen, for the purpose of exhibiting the destructive powers of new kind of explosive missile. A boat twenty three feet long and seven feet broad, was placed in large sheet of water; the vessel was constructed in the strongest manner and filled with solid tim Der four and half feet in depth, crossed in every direction, and clamped together with eight inch spike nails The account states:

 When the different parties had taken up their positions, on signal from the inven- tor, the boat was set in motion, and was struck just abaft her starboard bow, and in simultaneously scattered into thousand fragments. At the moment of collision the water parted, and presented to the eye of our informant the appearance of huge bowl while upon its troubled surface he noticed a corruscation precisely resembling forked lightning. A column of water was lifted up in the air like a huge fountain, from which were projected upwards for many hundred feet the shattered fragments of the vessel, which fell many of them sev- eral hundred yards distance in the adjacent fields Our informant examined many pieces, and found the huge nails snapped like carrots; the mast looked like tree riv- en by lighting; and never before, as he as- sures us, has he witnessed so sudden and complete a destruction, though, he has seen shell and rocket practice on the largest scale. Such seemed to be the unanimous opinion of all present. How this mighty effect was produced was of course not dis closed to so numerous a party, but two naval officers present were perfectly aware of the mode of operation, and the inventor one or two of the distinguished officers pre- sent In answer to question from Sir H

 Hardinge the inventor stated that without a battering train he could transport on a mules back the means of destroying the strongest fortress in Europe.