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HOW TIN WAS EXTRACTED
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foot bellows were employed before the system of working bellows, and producing a continuous blast by means of a water-wheel, is most probable. The foot bellows are known to most primitive people, but in Agricola's illustration of the smelting of tin
Slag-pounding Hollows, Gobbetts.
none are shown. On the contrary, Æolus is represented in the corner as blowing a natural blast.
The book of Agricola, published in 1556, shows that this primitive method was still in practice so late as the middle of the sixteenth century.
But this clumsy method could not be long practised on Dartmoor, where fuel—except peat—was
