38 



skill in chymistry, of the former of which many in- 

 stances occur in the works of Pliny and others. 



12. Having spoken of the chymistry of the Egyp- 

 tians, and of that of the Greeks and Romans, who 

 derived their instructions from those first masters ; it 

 would not be pardonable to omit mentioning Demo* 

 critus, the parent of experimental philosophy. This 

 great man, for the sake of acquiring wisdom, tra- 

 velled into Egypt, and made his abode with the 

 priests of the country, as we are informed by Dio- 

 genes Laertius, Strabo, Clemens Alexandrinus, Eu- 

 sebius, and Synesius. Vitruvius tolls ns, that hewrote 

 many books on natural philosophy, and was wont 

 to put his seal upon those experiments which he 

 bad tried himself. Diogenes Laerteus says the same. 

 Petronius affirms, that he extracted the juice of every 

 simple, and was so wholly taken up in experiments, 

 that there was not a quality belonging to the mineral 

 or vegetable kingdoms that escaped his notice, and 

 Seneca asserts, that he was the imentor of reverberat- 

 ing furnaces, the first who gave a softness to ivory, 

 and imitated nature in her production of precious 

 stones particularly the emerald. 



13. I shall finish this chapter with an assertion, 

 that perhaps will seem paradoxical ; that the ancients 

 knew the use of gunpowder. Virgil and his commen- 

 tator Servius, Hyginus, Eustathius, La Cerda, Va- 

 lerius Flaccus, and many other authors speak in 

 such a manner of Salmoneus's attempts to imitate 

 thunder, as suggest to us that this prince used for 

 that purpose a composition of the nature of gun- 

 powder. Eustathius in particular speaks of him on 

 this occasion, as being so expert in mechanics, that 

 he formed machines which imitated the noise of thun- 

 der; and the writers of fable, whose surprise in this 

 respect may be compared to that ofthe Mexicans when 

 they first beheld the fire arms of the Spaniards, give 

 out, that Jupiter, incensed at the audacity ot this 



