MAILLAKDET'S AUTOMATA. 335 



magician resumes his original position, and the drawer 

 opens to return the medallion. There are twenty of these 

 medallions, all containing different questions, to which 

 the magician returns the most suitable and striking 

 answers. The medallions are thin plates of brass of an 

 elliptical form, exactly resembling each other. Some of 

 the medallions have a question inscribed on each side, 

 both of which the magician answers in succession. If the 

 drawer is shut without a medallion being put into it, the 

 magician rises, consults his book, shakes his head, and re- 

 sumes his seat. The folding-doors remain shut, and the 

 drawer is returned empty. If two medallions are put into 

 the drawer together, an answer is returned only to the lower 

 one. When the machinery is wound up, the movements 

 continue about an hour, during which time about fifty ques- 

 tions may be answered. The inventor stated, that the 

 means by which the different medallions acted upon the 

 machinery, so as to produce the proper answers to the 

 questions which they contained, were extremely simple.* 



The same ingenious artist has constructed various other 

 automata representing insects and other animals. One of 

 these was a spider entirely made of steel, which exhibited 

 all the movements of the animal. It ran on the surface of 

 a table during three minutes, and to prevent it from run- 

 ning off, its course always tended towards the centre of the 

 table. He constructed likewise a caterpillar, a lizard, 

 a mouse, and a serpent. The serpent crawls about in 

 every direction, opens its mouth, hisses and darts out its 

 tongue. 



Ingenious and beautiful as all these pieces of mechanism 

 are, and surprising as their effects appear even to scientific 

 spectators, the principal object of their inventors was to 

 astonish and amuse the public. We should form an 



* See the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, Art. ANDROIDES, Vol. ii. 

 p. 66. 



