191 1.] DANA— NOTES ON CANNON. 149 



give full details of the equipment of his troops, do not mention 

 either cannon or gunpowder. The " Wuh-li-Siao," published 1630, 

 says " gunpowder came from the outer barbarians." 



The mention of an explosive in the Sukranita, a Hindu work 

 said to ante-date everything Chinese, is admitted by experts, I under- 

 stand, to be a modern interpolation. 



The " Liber Ignium a Alarco Graeco Descriptus," dating back 

 of the eleventh century, gives some 22 to 35 recipes for the so-called 

 " Greek-Fire " etc. No G^eek or Aloslem writer ever uses the term 

 "Greek-Fire." Col. Hime, an authority on this subject^ concludes 

 that the earlier recipes in the " Liber Ignium," were translated from 

 the Arabic by a Spaniard. The first four recipes are for the com- 

 pounding of '■ sea-fire," or, as there described, mixtures which will 

 ignite "when rain falls on them." Quicklime was the cause of 

 ignition; to it was added (C. 1300) sulfur, oil, gum Arabic; (C. 

 1350) sulfur and turpentine; ( C. 1405) sulfur, petroleum, wax. 

 None of these were true explosives. 



Berthold Schwartz, of Freiburg, in Breisgau, the favorite Ger- 

 man discoverer of gunpowder, made his discovery about 1320 to 

 1330, at the time the Florentines were popping off their " canones de 

 metallo." Schwartz is said to have preceded the Florentines in the 

 making of cannon but this claim has not as yet been established. 



Lieut. Col. Hime undertakes to translate the " Epistola de secre- 

 tis," of the liberal minded Friar Bacon ( I2i4?-i294). This letter 

 is probably earlier than 1249. It is written according to some 

 cryptic method, a bad habit both famous Bacons indulged in, and 

 if the secret of the over-cautious Friar has been guessed with even 

 partial success, we have a right to suppose that while the good 

 Friar was " experimenting with some incendiary compositions . . . 

 the mixture exploded and shattered all the chemical apparatus near 

 it" (Hime. 161). After this smash-up. Bacon could not fail to be 

 convinced that saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal, when mixed in right 

 proportions, had a distinctly explosive tendency — but he never seems 

 to have advanced the next step and discovered the projectile force 

 of the compound. 



^ Lieut. -Col. Henry W. L. Hime, "Gunpowder and Ammunition," London, 

 1904. 



