Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume II.djvu/527

 BELLONA BELLOXi, the Roman goddess of war. She is sometimes styled the colleague, sometimes the sister, sometimes the wife of Mars. Her temple stood in the Campus Martius, near the circus of Flamiriius. The priests of Bellona were called Bellomarii, and originally as often as they sacrificed to their goddess they were obliged to lacerate their arms or legs, that they might he able to offer upon her altar a portion of their own blood. The 24th of March in every year was the principal day of her wor- ship, and that day was distinguished in the Ro- man Fasti by the title of dies sanguinis. BELLOT, Joseph Rene, a French naval officer, born in Paris in March, 1826, lost off Cape Bowden, Aug. 18, 1853. He was a midship- man in the siege of Vera Cruz in 1838, and a lieutenant in 1851, and in 1852 obtained per- mission to serve as a volunteer in the English expedition sent out in search of Sir John Frank- lin, and commanded by Captain Belcher. On one occasion he offered to carry despatches by a journey over the ice. Being overtaken by a storm, the ice on which he was, with two of his companions, was severed from the land. He went to the other side of a hummock to reconnoitre, and was never seen again. His own diary, which was published in 1855, fur- nishes the best narrative of his adventures. BELLOWS, an instrument contrived for pro- pelling air through a pipe, employed for blow- ing fires, supplying air to ventilate mines, fill- ing the pipes of an organ with wind, and other purposes. The use of this apparatus may be traced back to a very early period. It is spoken of by Jeremiah (vi. 29), and alluded to by Eze- kiel (xxii. 20). When Homer describes the forg- ing of the iron shield of Achilles, he speaks of the furnace into which the materials were thrown being blown by 20 pairs of bellows (Qiaat). From the remarks of Plautus in his Fragment, and of Virgil in the Georgics, it would appear that the bellows of the ancients were made wholly of leather. The first ac- count we have of wooden bellows is by Henry bishop of Bamberg, in 1620, when one named Pfannenschmidt (bellows smith) commenced the manufacture of them in the Hartz forest, and by his success excited the jealousy of those of the same trade in the place. His art was disclosed only to his son, and the monopoly of the forest remained in the hands of his descen- dants to this century. Hans Losinger, an or- ganist of Nuremberg, is by some supposed to have invented the wooden bellows in 1550. Among many primitive nations of Asia and Africa this machine is still employed in its simplest form for blowing by hand the fires of rudely constructed furnaces, probably of the same form as those in use in the times of Ho- mer and of the Jewish prophets. As ordina- rily constructed, the instrument consists of two similar plates of wood connected by a strip of leather fastened around their edges, which with the plates completely encloses a chamber for air, and is so made that the plates may be BELLOWS 507 made to approach and recede by folding and unfolding the leather. In the lower plate is fixed a valve opening inward, through which the air enters as the plates are separated, and which closes as they are brought together, forcing the air to seek some other outlet. This is provided in a tube of small area compared to that of the valve, so that the air is made to rush outward with great velocity. As the ac- tion of this machine is to give an intermittent blast, it has been improved by introducing a third plate, attached to the lower one as this was to the upper, thus making a double bel- lows. The two lower plates have valves open- ing upward, and the pipe or nozzle for the exit of the air is in the upper of the two chambers. The middle plate is worked up and down by a lever arm, and weights are placed upon the top of the bellows to force out the air continuous- ly, and others are suspended from the bottom board to keep the lower chamber distended with air. A circular form is sometimes given to the plates or boards, and the air chamber surrounded by the leather is cylindrical. When shut together it is very compact and portable, which renders it a convenient form for porta- ble forges. The inhabitants of Hindostan make use of such bellows for blowing their small iron furnaces. A man sits down between two of them, and with one hand upon each works them alternately up and down, producing a tolerably continuous blast, but of small capaci- ty and force. The bellows used by the Chinese is a simple contrivance for forcing air with any desired pressure, and is upon the same prin- ciple with the large blowing machines now in general use. It is a -square wooden box or pipe, with a piston rod working in one end, and carrying a closely fitting piston, by the movement of which the air is pushed through a smaller pipe in the other end. On the re- verse motion the air enters through valves and refills the box. Bellows are used for obtaining a very hot flame with illuminating gas. The blast of air is directed through the centre of the yel- low gas flame, which immediately assumes a pale blue color and a long pointed form. By losing its illuminating power the available heat is very much increased. Such a flame is made use of by the chemist in trying experiments which require an intense heat on a small scale, and by the glass blower in making the melted glass assume the desired form. A very good form of bellows for the glass blower, which until re- cently was only made in Paris, is now manu- factured in this country. It consists essentially of a cylinder 8 inches in diameter and 14 inches high, made of leather or india rubber, which has three horizontal wooden disks or dia- phragms, one at the top, one a little below the middle, and one at the bottom ; thus dividing the cylinder into two compartments, of which the lower one is the force pump, while the up- per is the reservoir which retains the air and equalizes the blast. The details are as follows : The middle disk alone is fixed permanently to