256

Natural Pumps.

[Book III.

were “ so well sewed, that a considerable weight could not force any ofit out.” They carried from twelve to fourteen liundred pounds, and if anyair escaped, there were two leathern pipes through which the fishermen“blowinto the bags when there is oecasion.” Frezier’s Voyage to theSoutli Seas, page 121. These were real bellows, only applied to anotherpurpose. Had they not been found less efficient or less economical thanblowing tubes, they would doubtless have been used as Substitutes f'or thelatter in the fusion and reduction of ores. It may here be noticed as asingulär fact, and one which may possibly have reference to bellows, thatQuetzalcoatl, the Mexican God of the air or wind, was also the Vulcanof all the nations of Anahuac.

Both Mexicans and Peruvians were accustomed from their youth to useblowing tubes, for the primitive air gun, through which to shoot arrowsand other missiles by the breath, was umversally used, and the practiceis still kept up by their descendants. Motezuma, in his first interviewwith Cortez, shrewdly compared the Spanish guns, as tubes of unknownmetal, to the sarbacans of his countrymen. From the expertness acquiredby the constant employment of these instruments in killing game, it wasnatural enough to use them instead of bellows to increase the heat of theirfurnaces, and custom rendered them very efficient.

We have prolonged our remarks on this subject because it has beenconcluded that remains of furnaces, found far below the surface in variousparts of this continent and in regions abounding with iron, could neverhave been employed in reducing that metal; for in those remote ages inwhich such furnaces were in action, the bellows, it is said, was unknmm;a position that we think untenable, and quite irreconcilable with theadvanced state of metallurgy in those times.

Before leaving the subject of bellows and bellows pumps, we may re-mark that numerous illustrations of the latter may be found in the naturalworld. To an industrious investigator, the animal kingdom would furnishan endlcss variety, for every organized being is composed of tubes andof liquids urged through them. The contrivances by which the latter isaccomplished may be considered among the prominent features in themechanism of animals; and although modified to infinitude, one generalprinciple pervades . the whole; this is the distension and contradion offlexible vessels or reservoirs in which fluids are accumulated and driventhrough the System. On the regulär function of these Organs the neces-sary motions of life chiefly depend ; by them urine is expelled from thebladder, blood from the heart, breath from the lungs, &c.; they are naturalbellows pumps, while other devices of the Divine Mechanician resemblesyringes or piston pumps.

The whale spouts water with a bellows pump, and in streams comparedwith which the jet from one of our fire-engines is child’s play. His blow-ing apparatus consists of two large membranous sacs; elastic and capableof being collapsed with great force. They are connected with two bonycanals or tubes whose orifices are closed by a valve in the form of twosemicircles, similar to those known to pump makers as butterfly valvfes.When the animal spouts, he forcibly compresses the bags, already filledwith water, and sends forth volumes of it to the height of 40 or 50 feet.The roaring noise that accompanies this ejection of the liquid is heard at aconsiderable distance, and is one of the means by which whalers, in foggyweather, are directed to their prey. The proboscis of the elephant issometimes used as a hose pipe, through which he plays a stream in everydirection by the pump in his ehest. Numerous insects that live in watermove their bodies by the reaction of that liquid on streams they eject from