Chap. 1.]

Bellows Pumps from Kircher.

243

them, the imaginations of the designers ran perfectly wild; while many are in their forms and decorations exquisitely chaste, others are bizarre and some are obscene. There is one of bronze on which an individual is represented blowing the flame with his mouth, as in the act of kindling a fire; and in another the artist has introduced, as an appropriate embellishment, a person performing the same operation with a pair of bellows, of precisely the same form as those in our kitchens. No. 108 is a figure of this lamp, from the 5th volume of Montfaucon's Antiquities.

An example of the application of such bellows as atmospheric pumps has already been given, page 207. The adjoining figure (No. 109) is copied from Kircher's Mundus Subterraneus, tom. i., p. 230, Amsterdam, 1665: it represents two large bellows employed as sucking and forcing pumps, being worked by a water wheel, to the axis of which the crank represented was attached.

Bellows like the last and worked in a similar manner, were among aneient devices for ventilating mines: the various modes of adapting them to the purpose may be adduced as another example of their analogy to pumps. Sometimes they were used to force down fresh air in sufficient quantities to render the impure and stagnant atmosphere below respirable; at others they drew the foul air up. In the first case, they were placed near the mouth of the shaft, a pipe was attached to the nozzle and continued down to the place where the miners worked, and when the bellows were put in motion, currents of fresh air were supplied. In the latter case, the pipe was connected to the opening in the under board, i. e. to the aspirating valve, through which the impure air was drawn, and then expelled out of the nozzle; but in this case an expiring valve was required in the nozzle, opening outwards to prevent air from entering through it when the bellows were again distended. The same result was sometimes obtained in the following manner : An opening was made and covered by a valve in the upper board instead of the lower one, and when the bellows were distended, the impure air rushed up the pipe which was attached to the nozzle, and was expelled through the opening covered by the flap when the bellows were closed. Several figures representing these and other applications of bellows are given by Agricola. Goguet observes that draft furnaces were probably invented early, but bellows were not. We should suppose the reverse was the fact; for the advantages of an artificial blast must have been obvious from the first

244

Piston Bellows.

[Book III. use of fire, and naturally led to the use of the mouth to blow it, then the reed, sack, and subsequently a slit or valve in the latter, would follow as an almost necessary sequence; and long before the idea of increasing the intensity of heat by flues or chimneys could have been thought of. No natural occurrence could have led to the invention of these before the other, nor has there, as yet, been found any account or representation of draft furnaces of equal antiquity with those of bellows.

CHAPTER II.

PISTON Bellows: Used in water organs-Engraved on a medal of Valentinian-Used in Asia and Africa. Bellows of Madagascar. Chinese bellows: Account of two in the Philadelphia MuseumRemarks on a knowledge of the pump among the ancient Chinese-Chinese bellows similar in their construction to the water-forcer of Ctesibius, the double acting pump of La Hire, the cylindrical steamengine, and condensing and exhausting air-pumps. Double acting bellows of Madagascar-Alledged ignorance of the old Peruvian and Mexican smiths of bellows: Their constant use of blowing tubes no proof of this-Examples from Asiatic gold and silver smiths-Balsas-Sarbacans-Mexican Vulcan. Natural bellows-pumps: Blowing apparatus of the whale-Elephant-Rise and descent of marine animals-Jaculator fish-Llama-Spurting Snake-Lamprey-Bees-The heart of man and animals-Every human being a living pump: Wonders of its mechanism, and of the duration of its motions and materials -Advantages of studying the mechanism of animals.

THE bellows described in the last chapter are all formed of leather or skins, and are obvious modifications of the primitive bag or sack; the wooden ends of some of them being adopted merely to facilitate their distension and collapsion. From the simplicity of their construction and

general efficiency they still retain a place in our workshops and dwellings, and are in no danger of being replaced by modern substitutes: but the ingenuity of ancient bellows makers was not exhausted on these, for they had others, differing both in form, materials and mode of action; viz: piston bellows; machines identical with cylindrical forcingpumps. At what time these were first devised we have no account; but as they are described by Vitruvius, in his account of hydraulic organs, without the slightest intimation of their being then of recent date, they may safely be classed among those inventions, the origin of which is too remote to be discovered.

No. 110 represents a person working two of them to supply wind for a water organ, from Barbaro's Vitruvius, Venice, 1567. They are substantially the same as those figured by Perrault and Newton in their translations, and by Kircher in his Musurgia Universalis, (tom. ii, 332.)

Chap. 2.]

Piston Bellows of Mindanao.

245

The blower, by alternately raising one piston and depressing the other, pumped air into a large reservoir: this was an open vessel inverted into another containing water, and as the air accumulated in the former, the liquid was gradually displaced and rose in the latter, as in a gas holder. It was the constant pressure exerted by this displaced water that urged the air through the pipes of the organ, whenever the valves for its admission were opened. The question, perhaps may be asked, Why did the ancients prefer these bellows in their organs to those formed of leather and boards, such as are figured at Nos. 105, 108, 109? Probably because the pressure required to be overcome in forcing air into the reservoirs was greater than the form and materials of the latter could safely bear. It is very obvious from the brief description of the piston bellows of the Romans, that they were calculated to produce much stronger blasts than could be obtained from those made of leather. Vitruvius informs us that the cylinders and valves were made of brass, and the pistons were accurately turned and covered (or packed) with strips of unshorn sheepskins. They seem to have been perfect condensing air-pumps.

A figure of an ancient hydraulic organ is preserved on a medal of Valentinian two men, one on each side, are represented as pumping and listening to its music. This medal is engraved in the third volume of Montfaucon's Antiquities, (plate 26,) but the piston rods only are in sight; the top of the cylinders being level with the base on which the blowers

stand.

As piston bellows were known in the old world, it might be supposed they would still be employed in those parts of the East where the arts and customs of former ages have been more or less religiously retained. Such is the fact; for like other devices of ancient common life, they are used by several of the half civilized tribes of Asia and Africa-people, among whom we are sure to meet with numerous primitive contrivances, embodied in the same rude forms and materials as they were before Grecian taste or Roman skill improved them. It is chiefly to the incidental observations of a few travelers that we are indebted for a knowledge of these implements in modern days; but when the times arrive for voyages of discovery to be undertaken for the purpose of describing the machines, manufactures and domestic utensils of the various nations of the earth; (undertakings of equal importance with any other,) these bellows and their numerous modifications will furnish materials for a chapter in the history of the useful arts that will be replete with interesting information. As they are clearly identified with the forcing-pump, an account of some of them will not be out of place.

Dampier thus describes the bellows used by the blacksmiths of Mindanao. "They are made of a wooden cylinder, the trunk of a tree, about three feet long, bored hollow like a pump, and set upright on the ground; on which the fire itself is made. Near the lower end there is a small hole in the side of the trunk next the fire made to receive a pipe; through which the wind is driven to the fire by a great bunch of fine feathers, fastened to one end of a stick, which closing up the inside of the cylinder, drives the air out of the cylinder through the pipe. Two of these trunks, or cylinders, are placed so nigh together, that a man standing between them may work them both at once, one with each hand."a Here we have both the single and double chambered forcing-pump; and although Dampier has not noticed the valves, the instruments were certainly furnished with them, or with some contrivance analogous to them, but being out of

a Dampier's Voyages, i. 332.

246

Piston Bellows of Madagascar,

[Book III. sight, were left unnoticed by that intelligent sailor. The bellows of Madagascar, says Sonnerat, "is composed of the hollow trunks of two trees tied together. In the bottom there are two iron funnels, and in the inside of each trunk a sucker furnished with raffia, which supplies the place of tow. The apprentice, whose business it is to use this machine, alternately sinks one of the suckers while he raises the other."b Similar implements are also used in smelting iron as well as in forging it. In the first volume of Ellis's" History of Madagascar," Lon. 1838, there is a representation of two men reducing iron ore by means of four piston bellows. is a copy.

No. 111

The furnace is described as a mere hole dug in the ground, lined with rude stonework and plastered with clay. It was filled with alternate layers of charcoal and ore, and covered by a conical roof of clay, a small opening being left at the apex. The bellows were formed of the trunks of trees, and stood five feet above the ground, in which they were firmly imbedded. The lower ends were closed" air tight," and a short bamboo tube conveyed the wind from each to the fire, as represented. "A rude sort of piston is fitted to each of the cylinders, and the apparatus for raising the wind is complete." As no mention is made of valves nor of the openings through which air entered the cylinders, it is probable that the pistons were perforated for that purpose, and the passages covered by flaps or valves opening downwards, a device which the artificers of Madagascar are acquainted with. See No. 114. These bellows are of various sizes, though generally from 4 to 6 inches in diameter. Sometimes only one is used, but it is then made of larger dimensions, and the blower stands and works it with both his hands. To do it conveniently, he raises himself on a bank of earth. The bellows are not always perpendicular, but are inclined as figured in the back ground of the cut.

b Sonnerat's Voyages, iii. 36.

Chap. 2.]

Southern Asia and Western Africa.

247

The blacksmiths of Java use the same kind. Raffles, in his History of the Island, (2 vol. 193,) after quoting Dampier's description of the bellows of Mindanao, observes his account 'exactly corresponds" with that of Java. "The blacksmiths' bellows of Sumatra," says Mr. Marsden, "are thus constructed: two bamboos of about four inches diameter and five feet in length, stand perpendicularly near the fire, open at the upper end and stopped below. About an inch or two from the bottom a small joint of bamboo is inserted into each, which serve as nozzles, pointing to and meeting at the fire. To produce a stream of air, bunches of feathers, or other soft substance, are worked up and down in the upright tubes like the piston of a pump. These, when pushed downwards, force the air through the small horizontal tubes; and by raising and sinking each alternately, a continual current of air is kept up.' "C The Bashee Islanders use the same kind of bellows.d The smiths of Bali have them also: "their instruments are few and simple, their forge small, and worked by a pair of upright bellows, such as we find described in Raffles' Java." They are not confined to southern Asia and the Ethiopian Archipelago, but are used in continental Africa. "The bellows of the negro artificers on the Gambia, are a thick reed or a hollow piece of wood, in which is put a stick wound about with feathers, [a piston,] which by moving of the stick, makes the wind."f

Without entering into the controversy respecting the origin of wooden bellows, it may be inferred from the preceding extracts, that such have been in use from remote times; and that the cylindrical forcing-pump, so far as regards the principle of its construction, is equally ancient: of this, the instrument now to be described, affords another indication. It is the bellows of the most numerous and most singular of all existing people— a people, the wisdom of whose government has preserved them as a nation, through periods of time unexampled in the history of the world, and which still preserves them amidst the prostration by European cupidity of nearly all the nations around them; a people, too, who notwithstanding all that our vanity may suggest to depreciate, have furnished evidence of an excellence in some of the arts that never has been surpassed. The Chinese, like the ancient Egyptians, whom they greatly resemble, have been the instructors of Europeans in several of the useful arts; but the pils, like the Greeks of old, have often refused to acknowledge the source whence many inventions possessed by them were derived, but have claimed them as their own of the truth of this remark, we need only mention printing, the mariner's compass, and gunpowder.

pu

In the bellows of the Chinese, we perceive the characteristic ingenuity and originality of that people's inventions. A description and figure of their bellows were published in London, 1757, by Mr. Chambers, in a work entitled "Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines and Utensils, from drawings made in China." The following account from the fourth volume of the "Chinese Repository," a very interesting work published at Canton in China, is substantially the same. "The bellows used by them is very aptly called 'Fung Seäng, wind box,' and is contained in an oblong box about two feet long, ten inches high, and six inches wide. These dimensions, however, vary according to the whim of the maker, and they occur from eight inches, to four feet or more in length, and so of the width and height. The annexed profile view will give some idea of the principle upon which it is constructed."

C

History of Sumatra, p. 181. iv. 455.

d Dampier's Voyages, i. 429. Ogilvy's Africa, Lon. 1670, p. 356.

e Chinese Repository,