76
[Book 1.
to his plate, and thence to his mouth. Hence the advice of Ovid , forneither Grreeks nor Romans used table-forks:
“ Your meat genteelly with your fingers raise ;
And—as in eating there’s a certain grace,
Beware, with greasy hands, lest you besmear your face.
A German writer in the middle of the 16th Century, in suggesting thewhirling Eolipile as a turnspit, remarks, “it eats nothing, and gives withalan assurance to those partaking of the feast, whose suspicious naturesnurse queasy appetites, that the haunch has not been pawed by the turn-spit, in the absence of the housewife’s eyes, for the pleasure of lickinghis unclean fingers.” This evil propensity of human turnspits, however,eventually led to their dismissal, and to the employment of another spe-cies, which, if not better disposed to resist the same temptations, hadless opportunities afforded of falling into them. These were the caninelaborers already noticed.
..fcmuu™
liaiilini»?'
Horizontal tread-wheels for raising water are described by Agricola,from whose work, De Re Metallica, we have copied the figure. Twomen on opposite sides of a horizontal bar, against which they lean,push with their feet the bars of the wheel on which they tread, behindthem. Similar wheels, inclmed to the horizon were also used. For another kind of tread-wheel, see chapters 14, and 17. On the Noria andOhain-pump.
In all the preceding machines the roller is used in a horizontal position;but at some unknown period of past ages, another modification was de-vised, one, by which the power could be applied at any distance fromthe centre. Instead of placing the roller as before, over the well’s mouth,it was removed a short distance from it, and secured in a vertical position,by which it was converted into the wheel or capstan. One or more hori-zontal bars were attached to it, of a length adapted to the power em-ployed, whether of men or animals; and an alternating rotary movementimparted to it, as in the common wheel or capstan, represented in the nextfigure, No. 26. It appears from Belidor , (Tom. ii, 333) that machines ofthiskind, and worked by men were common in Europe previous to, and at the