Chap. 1.]
Bellows Pumj>s from KircTier.
243
them, the imaginations of the designers ran perfectly wild; while manyare in their forms and deoorations exquisitely chaste, others are bizarreand some are obscene. There is one of bronze on which an individual isrepresented. blowing the Harne with his mouth, as in the act of kindling afire; and in another the artist has introduced, as an appropriate embellish-ment, a person performing the same Operation with a pair of bellows, ofprecisely the same form as those in our kitchens. No. 108 is a figure ofthis lamp, from the 5th volume of Montfaucon’s Antiquities.
An example of the application of such bellows as atmospheric pumpshas already been given, page 207. The adjoining figure (No. 109) is copiedfrom 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 repre-sented was attached.
Bellows like the last and worked in a similar manner, were among an-cient devices for ventilating mines : the various modes of adapting themto the purpose may be adduced as another example of their analogy topumps. Sometimes they wore used to force down fresh air in sufficientquantities to render the impure and stagnant atmosphere below respira-ble; at others they drew the foul air up. In the first case, they wereplaeed near the mouth of the sbaft, a pipe was attached to the nozzle andcontinued down to the place where the miners worked, and when the bel-lows were put in motion, currents of fresh air were supplied. In thelatter 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, andthen expelled out of the nozzle ; but in this case an expiring valve wasrequired in the nozzle, opening outwards to prevent air from enteringthrough it when the bellows were again distended. The same result wassometimes obtained in the following manner : An opening was made andcovered bv a valve in the upper board instead of the lower one, andwhen the bellows were distended, the impure air rushed up the pipewhich was attached to the nozzle, and was- expelled through the openingcovered by the flap when the bellows were closed. Several figures re-presenting these and other applieations of bellows are given by Agricola.
Goguet observes that draft furnaees were probably invented early,but bellows were not. We should suppose the reverse was the fact; forthe advantages of an artificial blast must have been obvious from the first