168 GROWTH AND DECLINE OF CULTURE. 



slits whicli served as valves. Several of these skin-bellows are 

 often used at once in Africa, and there are to be found im- 

 proved forms wliicli approacb more nearly to our bellows with 

 boards, but the principle is always the same.^ But the Malay 

 blowing apparatus is something very different ; it is a double- 

 barreled air forcing-pump. It consists of two bamboos, four 

 inches in diameter and five feet long, which are set upright, 

 forming the cylinders, which are open above, and closed below 

 except by two small bamboo tubes which converge and meet 

 at the fire. Each piston consists of a bunch of feathers or 

 other soft substance, which expands and fits tightly in the 

 cylinder while it is being forcibly driven down, and collapses 

 to let the air pass as it is drawn up ; and a boy perched on a 

 high seat or stand works the two pistons alternately by the 

 piston-rods, which are sticks. (It is likely that each cylinder 

 may have a valve to prevent the return draught.) Similar 

 contrivances have been described elsewhere in the Eastern 

 Archipelago, in Java, IMindanao, Borneo, and New Guinea, 

 and in Siam, the cylinders being sometimes bamboos and 

 sometimes hollowed trunks of trees. Marsden called attention 

 to the fact that the apparatus used in Madagascar is similar to 

 that of Sumatra. There is a description and drawing in Ellis's 

 ' Madagascar,' which need not be quoted in detail, as it does 

 not differ in principle from that of the Eastern Archipelago. 

 A single cylinder is sometimes used in Madagascar, and per- 

 haps also in Borneo, but as a rule the far more advantageous 

 plan of working two or several at once is adopted. The Chi- 

 nese tinkers, who practise the art, quite unknown in Europe, 

 of patching a cast-iron vessel with a clot of melted iron, per- 

 form this extraordinary feat with an air forcing-pump, which 

 has indeed but a single trunk and a piston packed with feathers, 

 but is improved by valves and a passage which give it what is 

 known as a " double action," so that the single barrel does the 

 work of two in the ruder construction of the islands.^ 



' Petherick, pp. 293, 395. Andersson, p. 304. Backhouse, Narr. of a Visit to 

 the Mauritius and S. Africa ; London, 1844, p. 377. Du Chaillu, ' Equatorial 

 Africa ;' p. 91, etc. etc. 



* Marsden, p. 181. Eaffles, Hist, of Java, toI. i. pp. 168, 173. Dampier, 



