In Siam it is a custom, and one apparently of considerable antiquity, to celebrate certain religious festivals with firework displays. These displays take place in the day-time, and take the form of discharges of rockets, some of which are of very large size; a writer giving their length, exclusive of the stick, as from 8 ft. to 10 ft. The case is composed of a section of bamboo bound with string. The composition consists of coarse native powder, of which from 20 lbs. to 30 lbs. is often used in one case. The rocket stick, which is of bamboo, varying from 20 ft. to 40 ft. in length, is gaily decorated with coloured paper and tinsel and fitted with bamboo whistles. A rough scaffold is erected from which to fire the rockets, and according to those who have witnessed such exhibitions, considerable altitudes are reached by the rockets in flight. As may be expected with such crude methods, mishaps are of frequent occurrence. [Illustration] CHAPTER III PYROTECHNY IN EUROPE Pyrotechnic compositions and gunpowder are inextricably mixed together in early European records; for our inquiries it will serve no useful purpose to disentangle them, the latter being only a particular case of the former. We will therefore deal with them together, taking the evidence of the knowledge of one as that of both, as until gunpowder is specifically mentioned as being used as a propellant in a gun or similar weapon, there is nothing to distinguish it from any other pyrotechnic composition. The earliest record of European pyrotechny is in Claudius’ account of the public festivities during the consulate of Theodosius in the fourth century A.D., in which he describes fire “which ran about in different directions over the planks without burning or even charring them, and which formed by their twisting and turning globes of fire.” Leo VI, Emperor of the East, in a work written about A.D. 900, says: “We have divers ways of destroying the enemies’ ships, as by means of fire prepared in tubes, from which they issue with a sound of thunder, and with a fiery smoke that burns the vessels on which they are hurled. A tube of tin must be put on the front of the ship to hurl this from.” The most interesting reference of an early date is supposed to have been written by Marcus Graecus in his “Liber ignium ad comburendos hostes” (Book of fires for burning up the enemy), in which he not only gives the exact proportions of the compositions, but describes what is virtually the modern cracker, and also a primitive form of rocket. The case of the former was only partially filled, as with the jumping cracker of to-day, and although the wording is not very explicit, it was apparently bent in a similar way.