The first recorded effort to overcome an enemy by the generation of poisonous and suffocating gases seems to have been in the wars of the Athenians and Spartans (431-404 B.C.) when, besieging the cities of Platea and Belium, the Spartans saturated wood with pitch and sulfur and burned it under the walls of these cities in the hope of choking the defenders and rendering the assault less difficult. Similar uses of poisonous gases are recorded during the Middle Ages. In effect they were like our modern stink balls, but were projected by squirts or in bottles after the manner of a hand grenade. The legend is told of Prester John (about the eleventh century), that he stuffed copper figures with explosives and combustible materials which, emitted from the mouths and nostrils of the effigies, played great havoc. The idea referred to by the writer in the _Candid Quarterly Review_, is from the pen of the English Lord Dundonald, which appeared in the publication entitled “The Panmure Papers.” This is an extremely dull record of an extremely dull person, only rendered interesting by the one portion, concerned with the use of poison gases, which, it is said, “should never have been published at all.” That portion of the article from the _Candid Quarterly Review_ dealing with the introduction of poisonous gas by the Germans, and referred to in the first paragraph above, is quoted in full as follows: “The great Admiral Lord Dundonald—perhaps the ablest sea captain ever known, not even excluding Lord Nelson—was also a man of wide observation, and no mean chemist. He had been struck in 1811 by the deadly character of the fumes of sulphur in Sicily; and, when the Crimean War was being waged, he communicated to the English government, then presided over by Lord Palmerston, a plan for the reduction of Sebastopol by sulphur fumes. The plan was imparted to Lord Panmure and Lord Palmerston, and the way in which it was received is so illustrative of the trickery and treachery of the politician that it is worth while to quote Lord Palmerston’s private communication upon it to Lord Panmure: “LORD PALMERSTON TO LORD PANMURE “‘HOUSE OF COMMONS, 7th August, 1855 “‘I agree with you that if Dundonald will go out himself to superintend and direct the execution of his scheme, we ought to accept his offer and try his plan. If it succeeds, it will, as you say, save a great number of English and French lives; if it fails _in his hands_, we shall be exempt from blame, and if we come in for a small share of the ridicule, we can bear it, and the greater part will fall on him. You had best, therefore, make arrangement with him without delay, and with as much secrecy as the nature of things will admit of.’