Page:Pyrotechnics the history and art of firework making (1922).djvu/232

 Bate extends this list considerably by the ingredients of a series of compositions which he has evidently taken from some alchemistic work. These compositions are all either designed to burn under water or to ignite spontaneously in water, and fall somewhat outside the bounds of our subject. Frézier also includes these, evidently from the same source.

Bate also refers to a liquid, the recipe for which was probably taken from the same work.

"Aqua ardens." The following are his directions for preparing it: "Take old red wine, put it into a glassed vessell, and put into it of orpiment one pound, quicke sulphur halfe a pound, quicke lime a quarter of a pound; mingle them very well, and afterwards distill them in a rosewater still; a cloth being wet in this water will burne like a candle and will not be quenched with water."

It is difficult to see what he obtained by this process differing from spirits of wine. The quicklime would serve to dehydrate the wine, and probably no part of the orpiment or sulphur would be taken over in the distillation.

Rather over a century later we find Frézier and Jones have made some additions to the ingredients of pyrotechny, the most notable innovations being the use of iron filings (not to be confused with the iron scales of Bate, which were probably hammerslag, the magnetic oxide of iron), steel filings and pulverised cast-iron. Beyond these, and the spark-producing agent already mentioned, the other additions are of small importance, the most notable being lapis caliminaris, or the mineral carbonate of zinc, which however was not used as are metal salts to-day, that is, for the production of colour.

Jones's book, written some years after that of Frézier, shows little advance from the latter as far as pyrotechnic results are concerned. What he has done, however, is to eliminate what might be called the alchemistic, or one