Vessels with Tubulär Spouts.

411

Chap. 4.;

put the ball on the fire, then tbe heat acting against the said ball, will causeall the water to vise through the tube C.”

On the supposition that this apparatus was originally designed by De-caus, M. Arago has claimed for France the invention of the steam engine.The English , he observes in his Memoir of Watt, have ascribed the honorto the Marquis of Worcester ; but on this side the channel, “ we main-tain that it belongs to a humble engineer, almost forgotten by our bio-graphers, viz. Solomon de Caus.” And in his ‘History of the SteamEngine,’ he asserts that “ the idea of raising water by the elastic forceof steam” belongs to the same individual. With the disposition andeven an anxiety to give to every inventor his full meed of praise, weconfess that we cannot perceive in the figure and description before us,sufficient ground from which such inferences could fairly be drawn.The fact is, to no one age or people can the origin of the steam enginebe attributed—nor yet its various applications. That some have contri-buted greatly more than others to develope, mature and apply it, noperson doubts.

Were it even admitted that no apparatus precisely like that representedin the figure was previously known, it would be difKcult to establish theClaims put forward in behalf of Decaus. But there was nothing noveleither in its construction or in the principle of its Operation; while fornearly all practical purposes it was valueless.

So far as respects the apparatus simply, no part of it was invented byhim. It is figured in the Spiritalia as an illustration of Problem IX, viz.a hollow sphere partly filled with water, and resting upon a tripod, witha jet pipe extending down into the liquid. Instead of fire under it toraise steam, a syringe is connected to the upper part, by which to injectair or water. This figure is copied in Plate VII of the “ Forcible Move-ments,” (Leak’s Trans.) and of it Decaus observes, “ as concerning thefigure of the globe, it may serve for pleasure to cast the water very highby the pipe, after that you have forced it in with violence with the sy-ringe.” Had not this device of raising water by air compressed with asyringe been found in the Spiritalia, it might also have been deemed theinvention of Decaus, for he does not mention the source whence he de-rived it; and as it is, we think he may with as much reason be consideredthe author of a?>-engines, as the first inventor of steam engines. Theapparatus is also a modification of that by which Heron raised water bythe heat of the sun, but the author of the Spiritalia was too Well versedm the subject, to introduce m that work such a device as that of Decaus.

The elevation of water by the elastic force of steam was also wellknown before the time of Decaus. Nature herseif has always presentedstriking proofs of it in boiling springs, and in the magnificent fountainsand jets that are thrown up in various parts of the earth from subter-raneous cauldrons by imprisoned steam ; as in the Geysers of Iceland ,where the hot liquid is thus violently forced through natural tubes, ofmne or ten feet in diameter, to heights varying from twenty to ninetyfeet, and accompanied with intermitting volumes of the vapor; pheno-mena the philosophy of which was well understood by the ancients. Butif such examples are deemed too indirect, and as known only to a few,there are others with which people generally have always been conver-sant: Vessels for heating water, with tubulär spouts, whose upper orificesstand higher than the top of the vessels or the liquid within them, are ofextreme antiquity; some that resemble our tea-kettles and eoffee-pots arefound portrayed on the paintings and sculptures of Egypt . Now every