From these simple beginnings, ammunition has come to have many different forms to fit many different purposes. Some shells are made of very hard metal to pierce thick steel armour. Some are made of soft metal that will break into hundreds of pieces, spraying "bullets" all around them wherever they strike.
Some are filled with white phosphorus or some other chemical that burns with great heat, and these are used for starting fires where the shell lands. Some shells simply make a lot of smoke, to throw up a smoke screen and hide the movements of troops.
Artillery ammunition is not exploded by a percussion cap struck by a hammer, but by a fuse—a tube containing the first explosive, which sets off the big explosive inside the gun. An explosive shell carries its own fuse or detonator (which means "exploder"). During World War II, the United States developed a fuse that will explode a shell when it gets within a certain distance of its target.
This is called a proximity fr/se ("proximity" means "nearness"). It contains tiny radar equipment that sets off the charge when the shell comes close enough to a solid object. This is much used in anti-aircraft artillery. The latest development in ammunition is guided missles, about which there is a separate article.
Spiders In The Garden
Watching for their prey in the centre of a radiating geometrical snare, we often find the garden spiders. The beauty of their vertical orb-webs and the large size of these strikingly marked creatures always attract our attention during summer strolls.Jack & Jill The Vulture Twins
Probably this story of Jack and Jill, the Vulture Twins, would never have been written, if Betsy, Farmer Parsons' old brindle cow, had not refused to come up from the woods one night. But she wouldn't come, so Farmer Parsons had to go down after her.At Home With Mr. Burroughs
Youth still peered out at me in spite of his crowning thatch of silvery hair when I first met John Burroughs in 1904. As we walked together on our way to his rustic little house in the woods called "Slab-sides,"