[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.