what motions, and what sort of mills you please. By the side of which house without, may be placed your water-wheel of thirty-two, thirty-three, or thirty-four feet diameter. For the height of either house or wheel I would confine no person too exactly, but I guess that a convenient height, and no more than what is common enough. Under the wheel I would have a pond, and on the top of the house a cistern of wood lined with lead. The engine may be fixed in any corner of the mill-house, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two feet, or more, from the level of the pond: there two boilers must be fixed, as shown you in the draught for fixing the engine; and round each of them it is convenient to have a hoop of iron, with straps coming from them to rest on the brick-work, to support and strengthen them. Your clacks and pipes in the front being supported by wood, and the vessels standing on pedestals of wood, it is convenient that the flue, or chimney, be so contrived as to draw very sharp, and the flue to circulate round both the boilers, so that you may lose no part of your strength.

2. For palaces, or the nobility’s or gentlemen’s houses, you may fix the engine in any remote or out-room, whose floor is not above twenty feet from the level of your water, and you may continue your force-pipe to the top of your house, with a convenient cistern to hold your water; into which lay the pipes which may convey the water as you want it, either for pleasure or common occasions. This way of cisterns on the top of your houses or palaces would be of singular use in case of fire, as is said before; for in every staircase a pipe may go down the corner, or behind the wainscot, so as to be no blemish even to the finest of staircases. At every floor there may be a turn-cock with a screw. At the utmost end have likewise a small leather pipe, kept well oiled in a cupboard, or cavity in your wall, which may not be seen, but on the opening some part of the wainscot, or such other contrivance as the ingenious builder shall think fit to make use of. This pipe of leather must be long enough to reach from the landing-place, or stair-head, in all rooms depending thereon. One end of this pipe has a screw to fit the cock in the other pipe, and at the other end a pipe like the nose of a pair of bellows; so that wherever, though under a bed, or the remotest part of any room in the house, the fire breaks out, or is discovered, any servant having screwed the pipe to the cock, stops the nozle with his thumb till he comes to the place where the fire is, when, taking away his thumb, he, by directing the nozle to the fire, immediately extinguishes it, which being liable to be instantly used, I think a house, palace, &c. that has this invention, may be said to be morally out of danger of being destroyed, or so far injured as Whitehall and Kensington have been within a few years. This command of water must be allowed to be of vast advantage to any house whatsoever. Where brewing, washing, &c. is used, the copper standing high may be filled as easy as if it stood low, by which means the hot liquor may be contrived to go to all your coolers, and other vessels, either by a syphon, stop-cock, &c. without the hand-labour of pumping or bailing with buckets. But more conveniencies than we can at present foresee will be discovered in the use of this engine for palaces, houses, &c.

3. For fens, and the like, it is convenient that these engines be made very large; for at all small heights a small quantity of fire will deliver prodigious quantities of water. For suppose we force but thirty feet, and suck twenty feet, if the boiler does but fill the vessels, called receivers, with steam strong enough to counterpoise or exceed the force of the atmosphere, or spring of the common air, it will discharge them at so small a height as thirty feet force in a very little time; and the steam having very little force or spring is immediately condensed, so that it will presently suck full in one of the vessels while the other is discharged. Now, inasmuch as the fire being more or less adds nothing to the suction. I think such lifts, being seldom above thirty-six feet, or under six feet, all the directions further needful for fixing the engine for this use is, in all lifts under twenty-four feet, to place your engine so as a little above your force-clacks may be the place of the delivery of your water into a convenient trough or lander, to be carried off at the most proper place for its discharge. If it be any height above twenty-four feet, you have nothing to do but to continue the length of your force-pipe to the height required. It ought to have a shed or covering round it, and to be placed at the lowest place of your fen or bog, as other engines designed for that purpose commonly are.

As for fixing the engine in ships, when they may be thought probably useful, I question not but we may find conveniency enough for fixing them.

In mines and coal-pits the manner of fixing the engines is this; your pit being sunk, and a sump, or proper well, or bottom cistern, made to receive the water coming from the several feeders or springs. Supposing an engine, carrying three and a quarter inch bore, is to be fixed to deliver water about seventy feet high, constant running a full bore; in such case you make a small room in your shaft or pit, which, together with your shaft or pit, is nine feet square every way. As for example, suppose your shaft six feet by four, take three feet out of one side, and five out of another perpendicular nine feet, making a small floor or platform of boards over that part of the shaft which goes down to your sump or bottom cistern, so you have a complete room big enough for your engine, where ten or twelve people may stand on occasion. This floor may be about eighteen, nineteen, or twenty feet from the water, at the lowest you ever will draw the water into the sump or bottom cistern. If your ground be loose, it is convenient to line this room with brick; if rock, it may support itself. But in this the miner’s judgment must direct him. That the engine will stand best in the side of the pit where most is dug away, you may see in the second figure of the engine, being fixed in a mine. Your pipes, &c. must be fixed with cramps of iron, wood, or such materials as are convenient, to the side of the pit or shaft, so as to make it stand as firm as the very shaft itself. Your furnace must be so contrived, that your flame take a turn or two round each of the boilers, which any brick-layer used to furnaces can do; it being performed by running a row of bricks round them both like a screw or worm, which being contiguous to the wall of the furnaces and the boilers, makes it, as it were, a worm-funnel round them both; from whence you may continue your chimney to the top of your work, which you fasten to the sides of your shafts in the corners as you please, either with iron or wood, or both, according to the nature of the ground. And wherever you make a sudden bend or nook near a right angle in the chimney, have a loose brick or stone to take out the soot, if any should settle in such place, which in long working it may do.

SEVERAL OBJECTIONS

AGAINST THE

WORKING THIS ENGINE ANSWERED,

IN

A DIALOGUE

BETWEEN A MINER AND THE AUTHOR.

A DIALOGUE

BETWEEN A MINER AND THE AUTHOR.

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Miner . Sir, having been some time concerned in the engines now used for drawing water out of our mines, and hearing so much talk of this