Engines of war: or, Historical and experimental observations on ancient and modern warlike machines and implements [&c.].

Front Cover

From inside the book

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 115 - It will no doubt strike the reader with wonder to find a prohibition of firearms in records of such unfathomable antiquity ; and he will probably from hence renew the suspicion which has long been deemed absurd, that Alexander the Great did absolutely meet with some weapons of that kind in India as a passage in Quintus Curtius seems to ascertain. Gunpowder has been known in China, as well as in Hindustan, far beyond all periods of investigation. The word firearms...
Page 201 - The magistrate shall not make war with any deceitful machine, or with poisoned weapons, or with cannon and guns, or any kind of fire-arms...
Page 6 - Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well whose branches run over the wall. The archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him : but his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob...
Page 24 - And he made in Jerusalem engines, invented by cunning men, to be on the towers and upon the bulwarks, to shoot arrows and great stones withal.
Page 6 - And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water ; and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink. And God was with the lad ; and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer.
Page 166 - As soon as the clay, used to stop the mouths of the crucibles, is dry, they are built up in the form of an arch, with their bottoms inwards, in a small furnace urged by two goat-skin bellows; charcoal is heaped up over them, and the blast kept up without intermission for about two hours and a-half, when it is stopped, and the process is considered complete : the furnace contains from tsventy to twenty-four crucibles.
Page 114 - Hyphasis, he might, doubtless, have made himself master of all the country round them ; but their cities he never could have taken, though he had led a thousand as brave as Achilles, or three thousand such as Ajax, to the assault ; for they come not out to the field to fight those who attack them, but these holy men, beloved by the gods, overthrew their enemies with tempests and thunderbolts shot from their walls.
Page 108 - It has always appeared to me highly probable that the first discovery of gunpowder might originate from the primaeval method of cooking food by means of wood fires on a soil strongly impregnated with nitre, as it is in many parts of India and China. It is certain that from the moment when the aborigines of these countries ceased to devour their food in a crude state, recourse must have been had to such means of preparing it ; and when the fires became extinguished some portions of the wood partially...
Page 27 - Joseph us reports, that one of Vespasian's rams, the length whereof was only fifty cubits, which came not up to the size of several of the Grecian rams, had a head as thick as ten men, and twenty-five horns, each of which was as thick as one man, and placed a cubit's distance from the rest ; the weight, hung (as was customary) upon the hinder part...
Page 13 - London from being so enclosed as " to interrupt the necessary and profitable exercise of shooting," Public exhibitions of shooting with the bow were continued in the reigns of Charles II. and James II., and an...

Bibliographic information