(_l_) An Encyclopædia, quoted in the _Pai-pien_, 1581, states that “on the walls of Si-ngan there was long preserved an iron _chen-tien-lui_ = heaven-shaking thunderer, which in shape was like two cups”[326]—the shell of Valturio (p. 221). (_m_) Bits of metal, _mitraille_, were added to the charge of Chinese shells,[327] after the manner prescribed in a German Firebook (Romocki, i. 189). (_n_) The shell were loaded with the _maximum_ charge that could be rammed into them,[328] as directed in the same Firebook (ib.). (_o_) For repairing and closing the interstices of their built-up bombards, the Chinese appear to have used the same materials the Scotch used for Mons Meg; and it is noticeable that the Chinese preferred “western iron” for this purpose: “Ils emploient pour les confectionner du cuivre rouge. Dans les interstices apparents, ceux qui emploient du fer se servent de fer doux et malléable pour consolider (ces machines). Le fer de l’Occident est le meilleur qui puisse être employé à cet usage.”[329] In the “Chronicles and Memorials of Scotland,” vol. vi., for July 1459, we find: “For the repair of the great bombard at Edinburgh, brass, copper and iron, _so much_” [_pro expensis factis circa eandem emendacionem (magni bumbardi ante castellum de Edinburgh) in ere, cupro et ferro_]. (_p_) In 1520 the heavy guns of the Portuguese ships at Canton “attracted considerable attention, and soon acquired the name of ‘Franks.’... The Chinese seem to have subsequently availed themselves of the assistance of the Portuguese, and of their wonderful guns, to punish their own pirates”;[330] a circumstance which recalls the expedition of Mahmoud of Gujarat against the Bulsar pirates in 1482 (p. 116). These “Franks,” we learn from the _Wu-pei-che_, “were of iron, 5 or 6 _ch’ih_ (6 or 7 ft.) long.... Five small barrels (chambers) were used, which were placed (successively) inside the body of the piece from which they were fired off.”[331] (_q_) The Chinese guns manufactured in 1618 were cast under the superintendence of the Jesuits at Peking.[332] The general conclusion to be drawn from the foregoing inquiry is virtually Gibbon’s, which may be expressed in somewhat firmer language than he has used, since we possess many facts which were unknown to him. It is highly probable that the invention of gunpowder was carried from the West to China, by land or water, at the end of the fourteenth or the beginning of the fifteenth century, and “was falsely adopted as an old national discovery before the arrival of the Portuguese and the Jesuits in the sixteenth.”[333] CHAPTER VIII FRIAR BACON Roger Bacon was born at Ilchester, in Somersetshire, in 1214, and died about 1294. If the dedication be authentic, his _Epistola de Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturæ et de Nullitate Magiæ_, the work with which we are chiefly concerned here, was written before 1249.[334]