HOME AND FOREIGN.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13363, 3 March 1909, Page 7

HOME AND FOREIGN.

United Press Association—By Elsctrio Teie_rr«ph- --Copyright. A LARGE ESTATE. LONDON, March 1. Tho late Earl of Iveicester's gross estate has been sworn for taxation purposes at £879,694. A BY-ELECTION. Tho by-election at Forfarshire, necessitated by the Rt. Hon. J. Sinclair be- j ing raised to the peerage, resulted in Mr Falconer, Radical, with 6422 votes, defeating Mr Blackburn, Unionist, with 3970 votes. [In the previous election the Rt. Hon. J. Sinclair (Liberal), with 6796 votes, defeated Mr J. M. Bernard (Conservative), with 3277 votes 1 \ WAR IN THE AIR. A new six-inch howitzer has been designed against military aeroplanes, and has been satisfactorily tested. : [More than, one writer has recently ! • drawn attention to tho vulnerability i of dirigible balloons and aeroplanes to gun-fire. "Of all tho apparatus ever proposed for use in the battle-field," says the "Engineering News," New York, "a flying-machine is beyond all ■ • question the most vulnerable. It offers *j an ideal mark to tho bullets of the enemy. Its limitations of weight forbid its protection by any sort of armour. Had the flying-machine been developed forty or fifty years ago, when projectiles wore limited to small veio- ■ i cities and short ranges, it might have performed some service in obsorving , the enemy's forces, but with modern infantry rifles discharging projectiles . with an initial velocity of 2700 feet per second, and with lirrht artillery fitted to discharge a perfect hail-storm of bullets having equal velocity and range, tho rise of an air-ship at any point within several mites of a hostile army would be merely tho signal for its immediate destruction."]