To these bellows Schluter has assigned a much nobler inventor, who, perhaps, was the first person who made them known by a description. He says expressly that they were invented by a bishop of Bamberg[149]: but of this I have been able to find no confirmation; and I am inclined to ascribe that service rather to an organ-builder, or a miller, than to a bishop. According to Schluter’s account, these bellows were employed so early as the year 1620, in the Harz forest, to which they were first brought by some people from Bamberg. What Calvor says respecting the introduction of these bellows into the Harz forest is much more probable; that in the year 1621 Lewis Pfannenschmid, from Thuringia, settled at Ostfeld near Goslar, and began to make wooden bellows. The bellows-makers of that place conspired therefore against him, and swore they would put him to death; but he was protected by the government. He would disclose his art to no one but his son, who, as well as his grandson a few years ago, had the making of all the bellows in the forest. We are told by French authors, that the art of making these bellows was introduced into France, particularly into Berry, Nivernois, and Franche Comté, by a German. FOOTNOTES [140] Georg. iv. 171. [141] Lib. vii. [142] Epist. 90. [143] Lib. i. 8. [144] A complete description and a figure of these bellows may be found in Schluter’s Unterricht von Hütten-werken. Brunswick, 1738.--Traité de la fonte des mines par le feu du charbon de terre; par M. de Genssane. Paris, 1770, 2 vols. 4to. [Ure’s Dictionary, p. 1128, also contains an excellent figure of these wooden bellows.] [145] “Germany is the country of machines. In general the Germans lessen manual labour considerably by machines adapted to every kind of movement; not that we are destitute of able mechanics; we have the talent of bringing to perfection the machines invented by our neighbours.”--P. 200. [This remark of Grignon will sound rather odd to English ears.] [146] Becher’s Narrische Weisheit und weise Narrheit. Frankfort, 1683, 12mo, p. 113.