the Cotton Powder Company, and known as tonite No. 1, consists of very
nearly half gun-cotton and half barium nitrate. The relations by weight of
total combustion would be 51.6 of gun-cotton to 48.4 of barium nitrate.
The average composition of tonite I have found by analysis to be 51 per
cent. gun-cotton to 49 per cent. barium nitrate. The heat liberated is
practically the same as for an equivalent weight of KNO_{3}; but the
barium nitrate mixture weighs 2,223 grms. instead of 1,971 grms., or
one-eighth more. The advantage in mixing a nitrate with gun-cotton is that
it supplies oxygen, and by converting all the carbon into carbonic acid,
prevents the formation of the poisonous gas carbonic oxide (CO). The
nitrates of potassium and barium are also used admixed with nitro-
cellulose in several of the sporting smokeless powders.

~The Manufacture of Tonite.~--The explosive tonite was patented by Messrs
Trench, Faure, and Mackie, and is manufactured at Faversham and Melling at
the works of the Cotton Powder Company, and at San Francisco by the Tonite
Powder Company. It consists of finely divided and macerated gun-cotton
incorporated with finely ground nitrate of barium which has been carefully
recrystallised. It is made by acting upon carbonate of barium[A] with
nitric acid. The wet and perfectly purified, finely pulped gun-cotton is
intimately mixed up between edge runners with about the same weight of
nitrate, and the mixing and grinding continued until the whole has become
an intimately mixed paste. This paste is then compressed into cartridges,
formed with a recess at one end for the purpose of inserting the
detonator. The whole is then covered with paraffined paper.

[Footnote A: Witherite, BaCO_{3} + 2HNO_{3} = Ba(NO_{3})_{2} + CO_{2} +
H_{2}O.]

The tonite No. 2 consisted of gun-cotton, nitrates of potash and soda,