568

APPENDIX.

Fire-Engines and Fellows Pumps, pp. 241, 321. No. 284 is a bellowsor frictionless pump, from the firs-t edition of Bate’s Mysteries of Natureand Art. It is identical with the fire engine referred to in our third book,except being placed within an open frame instead of a cistern fixed uponwheels. For its description, see pp. 321—2. (The leathern bag whichconnected the two brass vessels is not figured by the old artist.)

No. 284. Old frictionless or bellows pump, A. D. 1633.

Water- Wheels, p. 282. There are indications in the Iliad that Vulcanused water power, and that it was by the dextrous concealment of it andthe mechanism by which it was transmitted that enabled him to excite inso high a degree the astonishment of his contemporarie.s, and to give riseto those wonderful Stories of his skill that are even yet extant. Whenengaged at the anvil Homer represents him, like a modern smith, with asingle pair of bellows. Thus Thetis found him “ sweating at his bellowshuge but in other scenes, he is exhibited rather as manager of extensiveforges for the reductinn of metals; the fires being urged by a large num-ber of bellows moved either by water or some other inorganic force. Likea Superintendent of modern iron or copper Works, ordering the bellowsto be thrown into geer, and the blasts increased or diminished as circum-stances require : so Vulcan “ turning to the fires, he bade the bellowsheavethen

Full twenty bellows working all at once,

Breathed on the furnaee, blowing easy and free.

Of Vulcan’s numerous works none were more celebrated by the ancientsthan the two androids which assisted him at the anvil. They were obvi-ously nothing more than ingenious devices for concealing the mechanismby which motion was communicated to the sledges they held in theirhands :—in other words, mere trip hximmers, and worked most likely by a