... Account of Experiments ... Relative to the Times of Burning Fuzes Driven by Machine ... with ... correspondence ... on ... artillery ....

London: Printed for the Author, 1819. First Edition.. Modern cloth.. Very good, untrimmed with occasional spotting.. 8vo. The 4 plates illusrate cannon and signalling devices.

A somewhat eccentric book made up of two different tracts that the author felt were of urgent military importance. The second tract, here present with its own title page, deals with the rather tired subject of optical telegraphy as a means of distance communication. The first tract, however, concerns itself with artillery, munitions, field mortars, and cannon of all kinds and their theory, construction, and strategic disposition in battle. The author was an advocate of the use of artillery to support infantry assaults and appears to have known what he was about in the technical end of these matters. The author survived stationing to Sumatra and Penang where he spent 17yrs. in various posts; he was responsible for the first useful maps of Sumatra and a founding member of the Asiatic Society. Absent from Riling; see DNB XII, 484-' 85.