540 THE CENTURY, 



to Town ; by improving of Lands wanting water; by the 

 supplying and bringing in of water into the City of Lon 

 don, or into any other places ; and by divers other ways 

 and means whereby great Encouragement will be given 

 to the People of the Nation, to undertake to work rich 

 Mines, to drain and gain in many Marish, Oazie, and 

 surrounded Grounds, which hitherto they have been 

 deterred to endeavour the improvements of, by reason 

 of the vast sums of money which must be necessarily 

 expended by the draining and conveying away the 

 water out of the same. ***** And that a 

 Model thereof be delivered by the said Marquis, or his 

 Assignes, to the Lord Treasurer, or Commissioner for 

 the Treasury, for the time being, at or before the 29th 

 of September, 1663.&quot; See Appendix. 



We trace the early use of steam in some of the simple 

 apparatus of various forms, called JSolipile, to a period 

 anterior to the Christian era. Greece and Borne, 

 France, Holland, and Germany, have each contributed 

 some instrument or other indicative of a knowledge of 

 the expansive property of steam, pent up in close vessels, 

 to give slight motions to, or force water from small 

 delicately constructed apparatus, designed for amuse 

 ment, or at most only to occasion a strong blast for 

 blowing a fire, as figured in &quot; Vitruvio de Architec- 

 tura,&quot; folio, 1521. Some of these early stages of pro 

 gress we shall further notice here. 



Besson, in his folio work on Instruments and Machines, 

 1578, among other contrivances shows, in plate XVIII, 

 a cylindrical vessel, containing a coiled spring, above 

 which is a close fitting disc, secured underneath to a 

 cord, which, passing through the coiled spring, passes 

 out at the bottom of the vessel, by which means it can 

 be used to pull down the disc, so as to compress the 

 spring, while the vessel is being filled with water, and 



