892 Scientific Intelligence, [Nov; 
been known from a period beyond all record; and in India, the use of 
rockets for military purposes is of an antiquity equally obscure, 
After some observations on the close analogy which all pyrotechnical 
compositions bear to gunpowder, Dr, Mac Culloch attempts to trace 
backwards to the oldest records extant, respecting any preparations of 
this nature; and these lead us to India, as before observed. 
In Grey’s Gunnery, printed in London in 1731, isa passage deduced 
by Philostratus from the life of Apollonius Tyanzeus; in this it is said, 
that Alexander the Great never entered the country of “the truly 
wise men who dwell between the Hyphasis and the Ganges,” ‘ de- 
terred, not by fear of the inhabitants, but as I suppose, by religious 
considerations,” ‘‘ for these holy men, beloved by the gods, overthrow 
their enemies with tempests, and thunderbolts shot from their walls.” 
The Egyptian Hercules and Bacchus are likewise said to have been 
repulsed from the cities of these people, who were the Oxydrace, by 
lightning and thunderbolts hurled on them from above. Gunpowder 
is mentioned in the code of Hindoo laws, which is supposed to reach 
back to the time of Moses; and these testimonies are confirmed by a 
passage in Quintus Curtius, mentioning a compound possessed of 
similar qualities. Dr. Mac Culloch thinks, however, that the story of 
the Oxydrace alludes to some kind ofrocket. 
“If thus far is right, the claims of the early orientals to the Greek 
fire is established. The Greeks might have received it from the Ara- 
bians, or from a more direct source ; but it seems likely that Western 
Europe, at least, is indebted to this people for its knowledge of pyro- 
techny.” It is then shown that this art is of more ancient date among 
us than is commonly imagined ; and having, as above, traced generally 
the origin of pyrotechny from the east, Dr. M. proceeds to see if 
some of the particular inflammable compounds, known by the name of 
the Greek fire, cannot be traced thither also. It is reported by the 
author of the Esprit des Croissades, to have been known in China in the 
year 917, and as the Chinese have never been known to borrow arts 
from the Europeans, and were acquainted with the properly explosive 
compounds, it is most likely that it was known to them long before. 
It is said to have been known in China by the name of the oil of the 
cruel fire. Thus the oily or resinous Greek fire seems to claim an 
oriental origin as well as the explosive and combustible nitrous com- 
pounds. 
The Byzantine writers are our earliest European authorities for the 
names, composition, and effects, of the Greek fire. The Greeks called 
it the liquid, or maritime fire, probably from its application in naval 
engagements; ‘ Procopius, in his history of the Goths, uses the same 
term as the Chinese, calling it an oil, Media’s oil, as if it had been 
some infernal composition of that noted sorceress. But the historian 
seems to have borrowed this term from Pliny, who calls naphtha 
sAdioy MidewZ, a sort of proof, by the way, that naphtha entered its com- 
position,” * Cinnamus also calls it sup Mycvxer; and all these names 
* There is a little confusion in this passage of Dr. Mac Culloch’s valuable memoir, 
which appears to have arisen in part from a somewhat obscure note in Gibbon’s History, 
quarto edition, vol, v. p. 402. Procopius, in his account of the celebrated siege of 
Petra, describes the use of what must have been a variety of the Greek fire, and says 
that it consisted of sulphur, and of bitumen which the Medes called naphtha, and the 
4b te eae ee gaa 
