372 JAMES WATT. 
the fluid. Soon the steam that was generated made the 
tompions fly out with a great report; then it escaped 
in two violent jets, and formed a thick cloud between the 
god and his stupefied worshippers. It would appear 
that in the middle ages some monks thought the inven- 
tion a good prize, and that the head of Bustérich has not 
acted before assembled Teutones only.* 
In order to meet with useful notions on the properties 
of steam, after the first glimpses given by the Greek 
philosophers, we are obliged to pass over an interval of 
twenty centuries. It is true that then some precise, con- 
clusive, and irresistible experiments follow upon conjec- 
tures devoid of proofs. 
In 1605, Flurence Rivault, gentleman of the bed-cham- 
ber to Henry IV., and preceptor to Louis XIIL., discovers, 
for example, that a shell or bomb, if made thick and con- 
taining water, when placed on the fire after being well 
closed, (so as to prevent the steam from expanding freely 
in the air in proportion as it is generated, will sooner or 
later explode. ‘The power of steam is here found char- 
acterized by a clear and, to a certain degree,, sensitive 
proof, with numerical appreciations ; but it is still pre- 
sented to us as a terrible means of destruction.f 
* Hero of Alexandria attributed the sounds, the objects of so much 
controversy, issuing from the statue of Memnon when the rays of the 
rising sun shone upon it, to the passage, through certain openings, of 
a current of steam that the solar heat was deemed to have produced 
at the expense of the fluid with which the Egyptian priests, it is said, 
provided the interior of the pedestal of the Colossus. Solomon de 
Caus, Kircher, &c., have gone so far as to wish to discover the spe- 
cial arrangements by which the theocratic fraud took possession of 
credulous imaginations; but all these suppositions lead us to think 
that they have not guessed right, even if there be, in this respect, any 
thing to guess. 
+ If any learned man were to think that by inlet at itareaee 
