Its Origin.

233

Chap. 1.]

that with which the smiths of Memphis , and Thebes, and Heliopolis,urged their fires, between three and four thousand years ago, and is similarto those found figured in the forges of Vulcan on ancient medals andsculptures. Numerous were the forms in which the bellows was ancientlymade, but the general features of the one to which we allude, (the lanternbellows) have remained as unchangeable as those of blacksmiths them-selves.

Strabo attributed the bellows to Anacharsis who lived about 600 yearsB. C. but it is probable that some particular form of it only was intended,for it is not credible that the Greeks in Solon ’s time could have been igno-rant of an instrument that is coeval with the knowledge of metals; andwithout which the iron mov,ey of Lycurgus , two centuries before, couldnever have been made. Pliny (B. vii, 56) attributes it with greater pro-priety to the Cyclops, who are supposed to have flourished before thedeluge. The prophet Jeremiah, who lived long before Anacharsis , speaksof it in connection with metallurgical operations. “ The bellows areburned, the lead is consumed of the fire, the founder melteth in vain.”Isaiah , who lived still earlier, viz. in the 8th Century B. C. alludes to theblacksmith’s bellows-^“ the smith that bloweth the eoals in the fire.” AndJob, nine or ten centuries before the Scythian philosopher flourished,speaks of “a fire not blown.” The prophet Ezekiel also speaks of theblast furnace as common—“they gather silver, and brass, and iron, andlead, and tin, into the midst of the furnace, to blow the fire upon it to meltit.” xxii, 20. Homer, as might be supposed, could not fully describethe labors of Vulcan, without referring to this instrument. His accountof the great mechanic at work, is equally descriptive of a smith and hisforge of the present day.

Obscure in srnoke, his forges flaming round,

White bathed in sweat from fire to fire he flew ;

And puifing loud, the roaring bellows blew.******

Just as the god directs, now loud, now low,

They raise a tempest, or they gently blow.

Iliad , xviii, 435, 545. Pope.

The first approach made to artificial bellows was the application of areed or other natural tube, through which to direct a stream of air from themouth—a device that has never passed into desuetude. Such was the ori-gin of the modern blow-pipe, an instrument originally designed to increasethe intensity of ordinary fires, but which subsequently became (as the artswere developed) indispensible to primitive workers in metal. How longblowing tubes preceded the invention of other devices for the same pur-pose is uncertain; but from the fact that oriental jewelers and goldsmithsstill fuse metal in pots by them, it may be inferred they were the only in-struments in use for ages, before the bellows proper was known: a circum-stance to which their universal employment over all Asia at the presenttime may be attributed, and the skilful management of them by mechanicsthere. Äs the only contrivance for urging fires in primitive times, menwould naturally become expert in using them, and, as in all the arts ofthe East, their dexterity in this respect would be inherited by their chil-dren, and be retained in connection with their use, with that tenacity thathas scarcely ever been known to give up an ancient tool or the ancientmode of using it: hence the paucity of their implements; a file, a ham-mer, a pair of tongs, and a blowing tube, being in general all that thebudget of an African or Asiatic jeweler contains.

As we have given figures of sucking tubes to illustrate the origin of

30