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 Busterich 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 pi'oofs. 



In 1605, Flurence Rivault, gentleman of the bed-cham- 

 ber to Henry IV., and preceptor to Louis XIII., 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.! 



* Hero of Alexandria attributed the sounds, the objects of so much 

 controversy, issuing from the statue of Memnon wlien 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 

 Cans, 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 suppositious lead us to think 

 that they have not guessed right, even if there be, in this respect, any 

 thing to guess. 



t If any learned man were to think that by stopping at Flurence 



