Pump.--An excellent and very simple pump is used by the Arabs in
Algeria. A piece of leather or waxed canvas, is stretched round one or
more hoops; it forms a hollow cylinder, that admits of being shut flat
like an accordion. The top and bottom of the cylinder are secured round
the edges of two discs of wood. Holes are bored in these discs and
leather valves are fitted to them. The lower disc is nailed to the bottom
of a tub; the hole in it corresponds with the feed-pipe, and the valve
that covers the hole opens upwards. The upper disc Is attached to the
pump handle; the valves that cover the holes in this disc, open upwards
also. When the leather-pump barrel is pressed flat, water flows through
the upper valves into the barrel around it; when it is pulled out, water
is sucked up through the feed-pipe, and an equal quantity is displaced
from the barrel. This flows out into the trough. A bag would do as well
as a tub, to hold the water which surrounds the pump-barrel; but, without
the water which it is the object of either the one or the other to
contain, the pump-barrel must be air-proof as well as water-proof. The
action of this pump is marvellously perfect. It attracted much attention
in the French Exhibition of 1855.
GUNS AND RIFLES.
General Remarks.--Breech-loaders.--At the present time when the merits
of different kinds of breech-loader are so hotly discussed, when all that
have yet been invented have some faults, and every month brings to light
some new invention, it would be foolish in me to write anything about
them; it would be obsolete before the great majority of my readers should
have seen this book.
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