350 SECTION MECHANICS. 



chapter of Deuteronomy, a statement is made clearly indicating that 

 in Egypt irrigation was carried on by some kind of machine worked 

 by the foot, whether the tread-wheel, with water buckets round about 

 it, mentioned so many centuries later by Vitruvius, or whether the 

 plank-lever, with a bucket suspended at one end and raised by the 

 labourer running along the top of the lever to the other end (an 

 apparatus even now used in India), we do not know ; but that it was 

 some machine worked by the foot is clear, the statement being that 

 when the Israelites had reached the promised land they would find 

 it was one abounding in streams, so as to be naturally watered, and 

 that it would not require to be watered by the foot as in Egypt. 

 Again in Chronicles it is related that King Uzziah loved husbandry, 

 and that he made many engines, unhappily not in connexion with 

 agriculture, but for warlike purposes, "to shoot arrows and great 

 stones withal." Further, in the seventh chapter of the Book of Job, 

 we have the comparison of the life of man passing away swifter 

 than a weaver's shuttle, this points unmistakably to the fact that 

 there must in those days have been in existence a loom capable of 

 weaving fabrics of such widths that the shuttle required to be impelled 

 with a speed equal to a flight from one side of the fabric to the other ; 

 and no doubt such a fabric must have been made in a machine com- 

 petent at least to raise and depress alternately the halves of the warp 

 threads. The potter's wheel also is frequently mentioned in the 

 Bible. 



Such instances as these are sufficient to show that considerable 

 progress must have been made in the very earliest days of history in 

 the construction of machines whereby muscular force was conveniently 

 applied to an end; but if we leave out of account, as we fairly 

 may, the action of the wind in propelling a boat by sails and the action 

 of the wind in winnowing grain, I think we shall be right in consider- 

 ing that in the times of which I have been speaking there did not exist 

 any machine in the nature of a power giver or Prime-Mover. 



Doubtless the want of a greater force than could be obtained from 

 the muscles of one human being must have soon made itself felt ; and 

 intelligent men, conscious of their own ability and of their mental 

 power of directing a large amount of work, must have been grieved 

 when they found the use of that power circumscribed by the limited 



