[31] Udoy Chand Dutt, “Materia Medica of the Hindus,” pp. 89-90. I presume that _sora_ (being of foreign origin) was a corruption of the Persian شوره (_shora_) = saltpetre. [32] “Hindu Chemistry,” by Praphulla Chandra Rāy, Professor of Chemistry, Presidency College, Calcutta, 1902, pp. 99-100. [33] Yavakshara was apparently the “barley” used in a saltpetre mixture of the Arabic treatise (in Syriac characters) given by Berthelot, ii. 198. [34] Romocki, i. 51. [35] هو زهر حجر اسيوس ... هو ثلج الصين عند القدماء من اطباء مصر ويعرفونه عامة المغرب والطباوها بالبارود Reinaud and Favé, p. 14. The phrase, “flower of the stone of Assos,” was a thousand years old when Abd Allah used it, for we find it in Lucian’s _Tragodopodagra_ (ἄνθος Ἀσίου λίθου, l. 162), a work written A.D. 180-200. But, like so many other words, it completely changed its meaning in the lapse of years. Abd Allah used it to designate saltpetre: Pliny the elder (“Nat. Hist.,” xxxvi. 17) tells us it had the property of utterly consuming dead bodies, except the teeth, in forty days—a property saltpetre does not possess. [36] _Majus Opus_, London, 1733, p. 474. [37] See chapter iv. [38] This process was carried out in the East, or wherever the natural saltpetre was collected; not at Waltham Abbey. The facts are taken from the “Handbook of the Manufacture of Gunpowder,” by Capt. F. M. Smith, R.A., London, 1871. [39] F´, &c., means a repetition of F, &c. [40] See chapter iv., recipe 14. [41] Taken from Reinaud and Favé, p. 237. [42] _i.e._ the lapis assius = saltpetre. [43] The way in which this process has been obtained will be explained in chapter viii. The phrases within brackets there are simply written consecutively here, word for word, except a few conjunctions rendered unnecessary by the punctuation. [44] Thucydides, vii. 43. [45] Diodorus Siculus, xx. 88. [46] Vergil, _Æn._, ix. 705; Lucan, _Phars._, vi. 199. [47] Tacitus, _Hist._, iv. 23. [48] _De Re Militari_, chap. viii. See Table II. [49] xxiii. 4. [50] Thucydides, ii. 77. “E lor porge di zolfo e di bitumi Due palle, e’n cavo rame ascosi lumi.” —TASSO, _Ger. Lib._, xii. 42. [51] Ib., iv. 100. [52] Ib., vii. 53. [53] In _Bibliotheca Script. Græc. et Rom. Teubneriana_. Leipsig, 1874. Chap. xxxv. p. 79. See Table II. [54] _Poliorketikon_, xxxv. 79. [55] _De Re Militari_, iv. 8. [56] Recipe 26 (see Chap. iv.). [57] “Bellifortis,” in Romocki, i. 154. [58] Whitehorne, Chap. xxix. fol. 40. [59] Official “Treatise on Ammunition.” [60] _i.e._ Pine-wood charcoal. [61] A gum. [62] Salt recovered from salt-water by natural or artificial heat. [63] Cream of tartar = bitartrate of potash. [64] Kallinikos was probably a Syrian-Greek; Hertzberg, _Gesch. der Byzantiner_, &c., p. 58.