day; and a thanksgiving at Christmas,
Easter, and Whitsuntide; when this was
finished, a cock, which stood on the top
of the tower, stretched out his neck, shook
his comb, clapped his wings twice, and
crowed twice. The bombardment may
perchance have ruined the tower,* but at
any rate the mazy intricacies of the clock
had become unmanageable long ago.
Vaucanson's duck, constructed a hundred and
thirty years ago, quacked like a real duck.
Among the curiosities preserved at
Versailles in the time of Louis the Fourteenth
was a clock made by Martinot. At the
completion of every hour two cocks crowed
alternately, and clapped their wings; after
which two little doors opened, two figures
appeared bearing two cymbals or gongs, and
two sentinels beat on the cymbals with
clubs. Maillardet constructed an oval box
about three inches in length, from which,
when the lid was opened, a tiny bird flew
out, fluttered its wings, opened its bill
with a tremulous motion, warbled its little
song, and then shut itself down again in
its nest. Those who remember the little
automaton called the Swiss Nightingale, at
the International Exhibition eight years
ago, will be prepared to understand that
Maillardet has had many imitators. Some
years ago there was an exhibition in
London comprising figures of a child, a
monkey, a goat, and a hare. The child
said " Pa" and " Ma," and the goat bleated.
In other automata we may sometimes meet
with a bleating sheep; and there was one
in which a dog barked whenever fruit in a
basket was touched by an intruder.
*Since the above was written, it has been
announced that the Strasbourg clock has really been
riddled and shattered with cannon-balls.

The machines which, with more or less
success, imitate human speech, are the most
difficult to construct, so many are the agencies
engaged in uttering even a single word
—lungs, larynx, tongue, palate, teeth, lips
—so many are the inflexions and variations
of tone and articulation, that the mechanician
finds his ingenuity taxed to the uttermost
to imitate them. The speaking doll,
which gives forth its melancholy and
woebegone " Papa!" and " Mamma!" is a
wonderment to all the little folks, who regret
very earnestly that such dolls are too
expensive to be freely purchased; but it is
nevertheless a poor affair, albeit there has
been much care and thought bestowed in
devising the kind of vibrating reed to be
used.

About ninety years ago, a pamphlet
appeared concerning two large brazen heads
that were constructed by the Abbé Mical,
to effect something in the talking way.
What was really done is rather doubtful;
but we are told that entire phrases were
pronounced, that the sounds were
"sur-humaine"; that there were two cylinders,
one of which could produce determinate
phrases, with proper intervals and prosody,
while the other could produce all the sounds
of the French language, analysed and
reduced to the smallest number. There were
people uncharitable enough to believe that
the speaking was managed by a living person
in an adjoining apartment, as in some other
instances which we have mentioned; but
the information is too slight to enable us
to judge on this point. Kratzenstein, a
few years later, made experiments on a
series of tubes and vibrating reeds, which,
by the aid of bellows, enabled him to
produce or imitate the sounds of the vowels;
but he appears to have made no attempt
with the much more difficult sounds of
consonants.

Wolfgang von Kempelen, inventor of
the far-famed automaton chess-player,
contructed a talking figure which cost him a
large amount of thought, time, and inventive
ingenuity. First he made experiments
with tubes and vibrating reeds, which
enabled him to imitate the sound of the
continental "a," like our "ah"; then, with a
tube and a hollow oval box hinged like the
jaws, he produced the sounds of "a," "o,"
"ou," and an imperfect "e;" then he
succeeded with the consonants "p," "m,"
and "l," and afterwards a few others;
but there were some consonants or sounds
which he never succeeded in imitating.
Having combined the results of his
researches, he constructed a head which
contained the requisite wind-tubes and vibrating
reeds, and a bust provided with some
kind of bellows. Thus armed, his automaton
could pronounce the words "opera,"
"astronomy," "Constantinople," "vous
êtes mon amie," "je vous aime de tout
mon cœur," "Leopoldus secundus," and
"Romanum imperator semper Augustus."
These words were spoken when the machine
was wound up, without any player being
required to press upon keys and pedals.
Tubes to imitate nostrils produced "m"
and "n;" a funnel and a reed changed
"s" into "z," "sch," and " j;" and there
were various pieces of mechanism to
imitate more or less successfully the
movements and action of mouth, lips, teeth,
tongue, palate, glottis, lungs, etc. Altogether,