“For sounds like thunder, and coruscations like lightning, may be made in the air, and they may be rendered even more horrible than those of nature herself. A small quantity of matter, properly manufactured, not larger than the human thumb, may be made to produce a horrible noise and coruscation. And this may be done many ways, by which a city or an army may be destroyed, as was the case when Gideon and his men broke their pitchers and exhibited their lamps, fire issuing out of them with inestimable noise, destroyed an infinite number of the army of the Midianites.” And in the eleventh chapter of the same epistle occurs the following passage: “Mix together saltpetre, luru vopo vir con utriet, and sulphur, and you will make thunder and lightning, if you know the method of mixing them.” Here all the ingredients of gunpowder are mentioned except charcoal, which is doubtless concealed under the barbarous terms _luru vopo vir con utriet_. But though Bacon was acquainted with gunpowder, we have no evidence that he was the inventor. How far the celebrated Greek fire, concerning which so much has been written, was connected with gunpowder, it is impossible to say; but there is good evidence to prove that gunpowder was known and used in China before the commencement of the Christian era; and Lord Bacon is of opinion that the thunder and lightning and magic stated by the Macedonians to have been exhibited in Oxydrakes, when it was besieged by Alexander the Great, was nothing else than gunpowder. Now as there is pretty good evidence that the use of gunpowder had been introduced into Spain by the Moors, at least as early as the year 1343, and as Roger Bacon was acquainted with Arabic, it is by no means unlikely that he might have become acquainted with the mode of making the composition, and with its most remarkable properties, by perusing some Arabian writer, with whom we are at present unacquainted. Barbour, in his life of Bruce, informs us that guns were first employed by the English at the battle of Werewater, which was fought in 1327, about forty years after the death of Bacon. Two novelties that day they saw, That forouth in Scotland had been nene; Timbers for helmes was the ane That they thought then of great beautie, And also wonder for to see. The other _crakys_ were of war That they before heard never air. In another part of the same book we have the phrase _gynnys for crakys_, showing that the term crakys was used to denote a gun or musket of some form or other. It is curious that the English would seem to have been the first European nation that employed gunpowder in war; they used it in the battle of Crecy, fought in 1346, when it was unknown to the French, and it is supposed to have contributed materially to the brilliant victory which was obtained.