(part iii. Scandinavia, sec. 1. 4to. 1819,) mentions a similar contrivance, in a clock at Lubeck, of the high antiquity of 1405. Over the face is an image of Jesus Christ, on either side of which are folding-doors, which fly open every day as the clock strikes twelve. A set of figures, representing the twelve apostles, then march forth on the left hand, and, bowing to our Saviour's image as they pass in succession, enter the door on the right. On the termination of the procession the doors close. This clock is also remarkably complete (for the age) in its astronomical apparatus; representing the place of the sun and moon in the ecliptic, the moon's age, &c.

Similar appendages to clocks and time-pieces became too common at the beginning of the last century to deserve particular notice. We should not, however, omit some of the productions of the Le Droz family, of Neufchatel. About the middle of the century, the elder Le Droz presented a clock to the King of Spain, with a sheep and dog attached to it. The bleating of the former was admirably correct, as an imitation; and the dog was placed in custody of a basket of loose fruit. If any one removed the fruit, he would growl, snarl, gnash his teeth, and endeavour to bite until it was restored.

The son of this artist was the original inventor of the musical boxes, which have of late been imported into this country. Mr. Collinson, a correspondent of Dr. Hutton's, thus clearly describes this fascinating toy in a letter to the Doctor, inserted in his Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary.

"When at Geneva I called upon Droz, son of the original Droz of La Chaux de Fords (where I also went). He showed me an oval gold snuff-box, about, if I recollect right, four inches and a half long by three inches broad, and about an inch and a half thick. It was double, having an horizontal partition; so that it may be considered as one box placed on another, with a lid, of course, to each box. One contained snuff; in the other, as soon as the lid was opened, there rose up a very small bird, of green enamelled gold, sitting upon a gold stand. Immediately this minute curiosity wagged its tail, shook its wings, opened its bill of white enamelled gold, and poured forth, minute as it was (being only three quarters of an inch from the beak to the extremity of the tail) such a clear melodious song as would have filled a room of twenty or thirty feet square with its harmony."

In Ozanam's Mathematical Recreations, we have an account, by the inventor, M. Camus, of an elegant amusement of Louis XIV. when a boy. It represented a lady proceeding to court, in a small chariot drawn by two horses, and attended by her coachman, footman, and page. When the machine was placed at the end of a table of proper size, the coachman smacked his

whip, the horses started off with all the natural motions, and the whole equipage drove on to the farther extremity of the table; it would now turn at right angles in a regular way, and proceed to that part of the table opposite to which the prince sat, when the carriage stopped, the page alighted to open the door, and the lady came out with a petition, which she presented with a courtesy to the bowing young monarch. The return was equally in order. After appearing to await the pleasure of the prince for a short time, the lady courtesied again and re-entered the chariot, the page mounted behind, the coachman flourished his whip, and the footman, after running a few steps, resumed his place.

About the same period, M. Vaucanson, a member of the Academie Royale of France, led the way to the unquestionable superiority of modern times, in these contrivances, by the construction of his automaton duck, a production, it is said, so exactly resembling the living animal, that not a bone of the body, and hardly a feather of the wings, seems to have escaped his imitation and direction. The radius, the cubitus, and the humerus had each their exact offices. The automaton ate, drank, and quacked in perfect harmony with nature. It gobbled food brought before it with avidity, drank, and even muddled the water after the manner of the living bird, and appeared to evacuate its food ultimately in a digested state.

Ingenious contemporaries of the inventor, who solved all the rest of his contrivances, could never wholly comprehend the mechanism of this duck. A chemical solution of the food was contrived to imitate the effect of digestion.

This gentleman is also celebrated for having exhibited at Paris, in 1738, an ANDROIDES,* a flute player, whose powers exceeded all his ancestry; and for the liberality and good sense with which he communicated to the Academy, in the same year, an exact account of its construction.

The figure was nearly six feet in height, and usually placed on a square pedestal four feet and a half high, and about three and a half broad. The air entered the body by three separate pipes, into which it was conveyed by nine pairs of bellows, which were expanded and contracted at pleasure, by means of an axis formed of metallic substances, and which was turned by the aid of clock-work. There was not even the slightest noise heard during the operations of the bellows: which might otherwise have discovered the process, by which the air was conveyed ad libitum into the body of the machine. The three tubes, into which the air was sent by means of the bellows, passed again into three small reservoirs concealed in the body of the automaton. After

From avne, a man, and dos, a form; a term under which some scientific works have classed all the automata, that have been made to imitate the human person.

having united in this place, and ascended towards the throat, they formed the cavity of the mouth, which terminated in two small lips, adapted to the performance of their respective functions. A small moveable tongue was enclosed within this cavity, which admitted or intercepted the passage of the air into the flute, according to the tune that was executed, or the quantity of wind that was requisite for the performance. A particular species of steel cylinder, which was turned by means of clock-work, afforded the proper movements to the fingers, lips, and tongue. This cylinder was divided into fifteen equal parts, which caused the ascension of the other extremities, by the aid of pegs, which pressed upon the ends of fifteen different levers. The fingers of the automaton were directed in their movements by seven of these levers, which had wires and chains attached to their ascending extremities; these being affixed to the fingers, caused their ascension in due proportion to the declension of the other extremity, by the motion of the cylinder; and thus, on the contrary, the ascent, or descent, of one end of the lever, produced a similar ascent, or descent, in the fingers that corresponded to the others; by which one of the holes was opened or stopped agreeably to the direction of the music. The entrance of the wind was managed by three of the other levers, which were so organized as to be capable of opening or shutting, by means of the three reservoirs. By a similar mechanical process, the lips were under the direction of four levers: one of which opened them in order to give the air a freer passage; the other contracted them; the third drew them back; and the fourth pushed them in a forward direction. The lips were placed on that part of the flute, which receives the air; and, by the different motions which have been already enumerated, regulated the tune in the requisite manner for execution. The direction of the tongue furnished employment for the remaining lever, which it moved in order that it might be enabled to shut or open the mouth of the flute.

The extremity of the axis of the cylinder was terminated on the right side by an endless screw, consisting of twelve threads, each of which was placed at the distance of a line and a half from the other. A piece of copper was fixed above this screw; and within it was a steel pivot, which was inserted between the threads of the screw, and obliged the cylinder above mentioned to pursue the threads. Thus, instead of moving in a direct turn, it was perpetually pushed to one side; the successive elevation of the levers displaying all the different movements of a professed musician.

M. Vaucanson constructed another celebrated Androides, which played on the Provençal shepherd's pipe, and beat, at the same time, on an instrument called the tambour de basque. This

was also a machine of the first order, for ingenious and difficult contrivance. The shepherd bore the flageolet in his left hand, and in the right a stick, with which he beat the tabor, or tambourine, in accompaniment. He was capable of playing about twenty different airs, consisting of minuets, rigadoons, and country dances. The pipe, or flageolet, which he was made to play, is a wind instrument, of great variety, rapidity, and power of execution, when the notes are well filled and properly articulated by the tongue; but it consists only of three holes, and the execution, therefore, mainly depends upon the manner in which they are covered, and the due variation of the force of the wind that reaches them.

To give the Androides power to sound the highest note, M. Vaucanson found it necessary to load the bellows, which supplied the air to this tone, with fifty-six pounds weight, while that of one ounce supplied the lowest tone. Nor was the same note always to be executed by exactly the same force of air; it was necessary to pay the most accurate attention to its place on the scale, and to so many difficult circumstances of combination and expression, that the inventor declares himself to have been frequently on the point of relinquishing his attempt in its progress. In the tambourine accompaniment too, there were numerous obstacles to overcome; the variation of the strokes, and particularly the continued roll of this instrument, was found to require no small ingenuity of construction.

All other exhibitions of mechanical skill, in imitation of the powers of human nature, were destined, however, to give way, in 1769, to the pretensions of the Chess-Player of M. Wolffgang de Kempelin, a Hungarian gentleman, and Áulic Counsellor of the Royal Chamber of the domains of the Emperor in Hungary. Called in that year to Vienna by the duties of his station, this gentleman was present at some experiments on magnetism made before the Empress Maria Theresa, when he ventured to hint, that he could construct, for her Majesty, a piece of mechanism far superior to any of those which had been exhibited. His manner of remarking this excited the attention of the Empress, who encouraging him to make the effort, the Automaton ChessPlayer, which has since been exhibited in all the capitals of Europe, was, within six months after this period, presented at the Imperial court. It is a presumption in favour of the pretensions of this contrivance to be a master-piece of mere mechanism, that the original artist, after having gratified his exalted patroness and her court with the exhibition of it, appeared for many years indifferent to its fame. He engaged himself in other mechanical pursuits with equal ardour, and is said to have so far neglected this, as to have taken it partly to pieces, for the purpose of making other experiments. But the visit of the Russian

Grand Duke Paul to the court of Joseph II. again called our automaton to life. It was repaired and put in order in a few weeks; and, from this period (1785), has been exhibited, at intervals, throughout Germany, at Paris, and in London; first by M. de Kempelin, and latterly by a purchaser of the property from his son; De Kempelin having died in 1803.

Our chess-playing readers will be able to appreciate the bold pretensions of this automaton. The entire number of combinations, which it is possible to form with the pieces of a chess-board, has never, we believe, been ascertained. To push forward a plan of our own steadily, and at the same time to anticipate the designs of an antagonist, requires a constant and acute discrimination, which long experience, and some considerable strength of memory, have been required to make availing, in all other cases. But this cunning infidel (for he assumes the figure of a Turk) drives kings, and castles, and knights before him with more than mortal sagacity, and with his inferior hand: he never, we believe, has been beaten; and, except in a very few instances of drawn games, has beat the most skilful chess-players in Europe. Dr. Hutton, on the supposition of its being altogether a mechanical contrivance, calls it "the greatest master-piece of mechanics that ever appeared in the world." We shall recount his pretensions in the words of an Oxford graduate, who published "Observations" on them, during his last visit in London, and subjoin a statement of the best attempts that have been made to account for his apparent skill, in a second article upon this interesting subject.

ON HUMOUR.

EVERY age has a style of humour peculiar to itself, and is, in general, little able to taste or appreciate that of another. One cause of this may be, that it is more the province of humour to paint the manners than the passions of mankind; and, from the subject not being permanent, the best wrought piece must fall into disrepute.

This may go some way towards elucidating the fact, which I am endeavouring to explain; but, though perhaps in the right road, we are not yet arrived at the object of our search. For one age is often indifferent to the humour of another, even where that humour has been exercised on subjects, which, if they do not deserve permanent praise, seem at least to merit the applause of one century as much as that of another.

We must, therefore, I believe, search for the main cause in the character of the age itself. I should say that of the present consists (to make a word for the occasion) in a certain matter-of-fact