CHAPTEK XXYIII. 



DISCOVERY AND INTRODUCTION OF GUNPOWDER. 



Some writers assert that the use of gunpowder, as well as 

 ordnance, was well known to some of the ancients, even as far 

 back as the year of our Lord eighty-five ; and in support of 

 this hypothesis, the following remarks of Uflfano, on the autho- 

 rity of Robert Norton, the author of a work entitled The Gun- 

 ner^ printed in London in 1664, are often quoted, viz: "That 

 the invention and use, as well of ordnance as of gunpowder, 

 was in the eighty-fifth yeare of our Lord made known and 

 practised in the great and ingenious Kingdom of China ; and 

 that in the maretyme provinces thereof there yet remain cer- 

 taine peaces of ordnance, both of iron and brasse, with the 

 memory of their yeares of founding engraved upon them, and 

 the armes of King Vitney, who, he saith, was the inventor." 



Another passage from Philostratus, the historian of Appol- 

 lonius Tyaneeus, about the commencement of the third century, 

 has also been referred to by some writers in favor of the anti- 

 quity of this invention. In speaking of a people of India 



