Lantern Bellows.
239
Chap. 1.]
imperishable pages, deserves not merely to be scrutinized, but accuratelycopied. Many of them are fraught with information of the highest in-terest to the arts; and whether the mass of hieroglyphical records be everunderstood or not, there is no difficulty in comprehending the most in-teresting of these. *
One of the figures in the last illustration is obviously a modification ofthe old lantern bellows (so named from its resemblance to the paperlantern, still common in Egypt :) they consist of two circular boardsUnited to the ends of a cylindrical bag of flexible leather. In the centreof one board is an opening covered by a flap opening inwards, and to theother the tuyere is attached. In working them, the board, through whichthe air is admitted, is moved, and the other kept stationary. They arequite common in Asia, Egypt , and generally throughout the orientalworld; and appear to have undergone no change whatever, either in theirmaterials, form, or modes of working them, since the remotest times:even working them by the feet, as practiced by Egyptians under the Pha-raohs, is still common at the native iron-forges of Ceylon. Dr. Davy inhis account of that island has given a figure of them, a copy of which isinserted in the Register of Arts for 1828, page 267: the cords for raisingthem are attached to an elastic stick, instead of being held in the handsas in the two last cuts.
They are used by modern blacksmiths of Egypt in a horizontal position,(as in the next figure) and worked by an upright lever, which the assist-ant pushes from and draws towards him. M. P. S. G-irard has given afigure and description of them in the Grande Description, tom. ii, E. M.p. 618, planche 21. He observes that the coppersmiths of Cairo andAlexandria use the same; and further that they are common in the inte-rior of Africa : “leur forme est probablement tres ancienne. II resulteen effet de quelques reseignemens que m’ont donnes des marchands venusavec les caravanes de Darfour, que des soufflets de la möme forme sontemploye par les peuples de Vinterieur de VAfrique.”
Lantern bellows were formerly common in Europe. They were em-ployed in old Organs. See L’Art du Facteur d’Orgues, Arts et Metieres,p. 667, plates 132 and 135. Sometimes the blowers had their feet fixedupon the upper boards, and holding by a horizontal bar they inflated onebellows by raising one foot, and compressed the other by pushing downthe other foot. (Encyc . Antiq.) The scabilla of the Romans were smallbellows of the same kind, one of which was attached to one foot for thepurpose of beating time, and with castanets were used to animate dancers.Several are figured by Montfaucon. The ancients varied the form of thebellows almost infinitely in adapting them to various purposes. Somewere attached to altars to aid in the combustion of victims : one for thispurpose is represented on one of the Hamilton vases. Lantern bellowswere also common in European Hast furnaces. No. 105 shows their ap -plication to this purpose, copied from the De Re Metallica of Agricola.Similar bellows, except the boards being of an oblong form like the onem 103, are common in Hindostan, and worked by hand as in the nextfigure, but without any frame to Support them; the blower kneels andWorks them in nearly a vertical position. See a figure in Shoberl’s Hin-dostan, vol. v, p. 9.
The bellows of Vulcan were probably of the same kind. Those repre-sented in tom. i, p. 24, of Montfaucon’s Antiquities, appear, from thatportion of them which is seen projecting from the back of the forge, tobe identical with those in No. 105, and worked in precisely the sameway. In plate xx, on Painting , of D’Agincourt’s History of the Fine