Miller, unlike you, I have my copy of Thomas--right in front of me. And an old Iowa farm boy like me can read every bit as well as a Redneck Hillbilly. Nowhere in Thomas' "Danger in Case Length" chapter does he say "Burrard should have said". Not there. Absent. Missing in action. Perhaps present in your recollection, but like I said, you need to reread it to refresh what you're incorrectly recollecting.
You're also misremembering what Burrard said about length. He wasn't talking about shells entering the cone "prior to firing". Here's what he says:
"The length of the loaded cartridge is EXACTLY THE SAME as that of the actual chamber and so, when turnover is opened on firing the mouth of the case is prevented from opening completely BY THE CHAMBER CONE;" (Emphasis mine.) Further: "The effect of the mouth of the case being held in BY THE CHAMBER CONE is much the same as that of giving the cartridge an exceptionally heavy turnover, and the effect on pressure will be obvious." (Emphasis again mine.)
As for Burrard and Thomas disagreeing . . . nope, not so. Eventually, after all the warnings about pressure increases from shells opening into the forcing cone, Burrard says the following:
"It will be realised, therefore, the the increase in pressure is the result of the longer LOADED CARTRIDGE rather than that of the longer UNLOADED CASE. But although these two factors causing an increase of pressure certainly do exist, the first is far greater than the second." (Emphasis Burrard's.)
Thomas repeats almost exactly the same thing: "But in the particular case cited by Burrard, the main danger arises, not from the constriction when the cartridge is fired, but from the fact that the longer-cased cartridges he had in mind invariably carried heavier loads;"
So, in summary, Bell was guilty of quoting Burrard out of context (although what Burrard wrote could have used better editing), but in fact proved that there is usually some increase in pressure when a case mouth opens into a forcing cone (which Burrard said, correctly, was the lesser of the two dangers). And Burrard and Thomas were in complete agreement on "the main danger": what's loaded in the shell, not how long it is. Which Thomas verified by posting the results of his tests with Eley shells.
