Mr Cadell's Description of the Hindoo Bellows. 85 



To work the bellows, a boy is seated on the ground between the 

 mouths of the two bags, holding in each hand the wooden lips 

 of one of the bags ; he holds open the lips of the right hand 

 bag and draws them upwards ; when the bag is drawn up to 

 its greatest extent, he shuts the wooden lips, and pushes them 

 down towards the nozle ; by this means the air is pressed out of 

 the bag through the nozle, and produces a blast : he has operat- 

 ed in a similar way with the left hand bag, so as to begin to 

 produce a second blast before the first blast is at an end ; — and 

 thus working constantly with both his hands, depressing one 

 whilst he raises the other, a continued blast of air through the 

 twere is obtained. This bellows is a less perfect machine, and 

 more is required from the operator, than in the common bellows: 

 for the lips, which act as a valve, require to be opened and shut 

 by the hand ; whereas, in the common bellows, the valve is 

 opened by the pressure of the atmosphere, and shuts by its own 

 weight. 



Sonnerat * describes the smiths that go about the country in 

 India as making use of this bellows. 



This kind of bellows occurs also in the south of France, 

 where it is used by tinkers, and where I met with it in 1826, at 

 Nimes in Languedoc. The bags of the bellows were two goat 

 skins, stripped from the carcase without any longitudinal inci- 

 sion, and with the hair outward ; in other essential particulars 

 the machine was like the Indian bellows. 



We may conjecture that thisbelloWs was introduced into Eu- 

 rope from India by the Gipsies, who are dispersed over Europe, 

 and are known in each country by a different name-j*. The 



• Sonnerat, Voyage dans I'Inde. He gives a figure of the Hindoo smithes 

 apparatus. In Denham's Travels in Northern and Central Africa 1826, there 

 is a plate representing Negro smiths of the interior of Africa. The bellows 

 which they employ is small, and, from what can be seen of it in the figure, 

 appears to be constructed on the same principle as the Hindoo bellows. 



t The gipsies are named Egyptians in an act of Parliament of Henry VIII. ; 

 Errones Nubiani in Ludolf 's Historia ^Ethiopica ; in Spain Gitanos, which is 

 supposed to be contracted from Egyptianos. Zigeuner in German, Tchinganes 

 in Turkey, Zingari in Italian ; these three appellations, Grellmann derives 

 from the Zinganes, a people at the mouth of the Indus mentioned by The- 



