40 



ral ways of encountering an enemy, by launching 

 fire upon him, and among others gives the following. 

 Mix together one pound of live sulphur, two of 

 charcoal of willow, and six of saltpetre; reducing 

 them to a very fine powder in a marble mortar. 

 He adds, that a certain quantify of this is to be 

 put into a long, narrow, and well compacted cover, 

 and so discharged into the air. Here we have the de- 

 scription ofa.orket. The cover with which thunder 

 is imitated, he represents as short, thick, but half 

 filled, and strongly bound wth pack thread ; which 

 is exactly the form of a cracker. He then treats of 

 different m thods of preparing the match, and how 

 one squib may set fire to another in the air, by having 

 it enclosed within it. In short, he speaks as clearly 

 of the composition and effects of gunpowder, as any 

 body in our times could do. I own, I have not yet 

 been able precisely to determine when this author 

 lived, but probably it was before the time of the Ara- 

 bian physician Meseu, who speaks of him, and who 

 flourished in the beginning of the 9th century. Nay, 

 there is reason to believe, that he is the same of 

 whom Galen speaks. We see also by two passages, 

 one of Aristotle, the other of Pliny, that the art 

 of making steel, and of tempering it, was known even 

 in their time. 



J4. It has been sometimes objected to the facts 1 

 produce, that had the state of things been really so,, 

 their own utility would have preserved them from the 

 outrages of time; our present ignorance therefore is 

 alledged as of sufficient force, to invalidate whatever 

 has been reported of the acquisitions of former 

 times. But how frivolous this objection is, appears 

 not only from the cause assigned of our having lost 

 the secret of rendering glass malleable, but also 

 from those monuments which still remain, and are 

 daily before our eyes, of the superiority of the auci- 

 cats in many parts of chymistry, such as the 



