There is no subject more intimately connected with the history of the world, from the remotest antiquity than the history of Arms, the fate of nations having always depended either on the superiority of the Arms employed, or on the superior discipline or dexterity of those who used them, wholly independent of the numbers by which they were opposed. ~Artillery includes all war-engines.~ Before the introduction of gunpowder, all kinds of weapons, both offensive and defensive, were included in the term “Artillery,” which has since become restricted to the larger kinds of fire-arms, such as guns, mortars, howitzers, rockets, &c. Thus we find in the I. Saml. xx., 40, “And Jonathan gave his artillery to his lad,” when speaking of bows and arrows. Again, in the 20th, Henry VIII., a patent was granted to Anthony Knevt and Peter Mentas, “to be overseers of the science of Artillery;” and in an enumeration of the different species of Artillery, printed in 1594, are reckoned “long-bows, cross-bows, slur-bows, stone-bows, scorpions, and catapultas.” ~Definition of Artillery.~ The root of the word “artillery,” is the Latin word “_ars_,” an “art.” It has been fantastically derived from the Italian _arte di tirare_, the art of firing. In the fourteenth century the science of war-engines was called _artemonie_, and its productions _artillerie_, from the old French word _artiller_, “to employ art.” Some writers state that the word “artillery,” is derived from _arcus_ “a bow,” the earlier species of artillery being termed _arcualia_. ~First invention unknown.~ ~Names of gun--from old machines.~ It is difficult to determine with any degree of accuracy the epoch at which gunpowder and its resultants, fire-arms, were first employed for the purposes of war in any part of the world; and this difficulty is increased, at least, as far as regards Europe, from the fact, that the first engines of war, depending on the use of gunpowder, were named after the old machines for throwing darts, stones, &c. ~First mention of guns.~ The earliest account which we have of gunpowder, where it is mentioned as applied to fire-arms, exists in a code of Gentoo Laws, and is thought by many to be coeval with the time of Moses. The notice occurs in the Sanscrit preface to the Code of Gentoo Laws, translated by Halhed, at page 53, viz:--“The Magistrate shall not make war with any deceitful machine, or with poisoned weapons, or with _cannon or guns_, &c.” Halhed observes: “It will no doubt strike the reader with wonder to find a prohibition of fire-arms in records of such unfathomable antiquity, and he will probably hence renew the suspicion, which has long been deemed absurd, that Alexander the Great did absolutely meet with some weapons of this kind in India, as a passage in Quintus Curtius seems to ascertain.” ~Greek fire, earliest European combustible.~ ~Gunpowder known before in China.~ ~Chinese explosive shell.~ ~Early Chinese cannon.~