In more modern times we hear of the eminent Dr. Wilkins, Bishop of Chester (who married the sister of Oliver Cromwell, and who may be regarded as the founder of the Royal Society), experimenting upon the transmission of sound; and Evelyn, in his “Diary,” writing on the 13th of July, 1654, says, “We all dined at that most obliging and universally curious Dr. Wilkins’s, at Wadham College. He had contrived a hollow statue, which gave a voice and uttered words”; and in his “Mathematicall Magick,” (a copy of which I have here) which was published in 1648, Wilkins refers to the speaking figures of the ancients. A contemporary of Wilkins was the celebrated Edward Somerset, Marquis of Worcester, who in his “Century of Inventions” gives as his 88th device: “How to make a Brazen or Stone-head in the midst of a great Field or Garden, so artificial and natural that though a man speak never so softly, and even whispers into the eare thereof, it will presently open its mouth, and resolve the Question in French, Latine, Welsh, Irish or English, in good terms uttering it out of his mouth, and then shut it untill the next Question be asked.”—But, unhappily, he does not tell us how it may be done. The great period for the construction of automata began at the close of the fourteenth century, and reached its climax at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century. One of the earliest mechanicians who devoted his skill to automata was Johann Müller, of Königsberg, commonly known as Regiomontanus. This eminent mathematician and astronomer made of iron a fly which is said to have left his hand and, after flying to each of the guests in the room, returned to its master, alighting on his hand. Müller made also a still more wonderful machine; this was an artificial eagle which, on the authority of Peter Ramus, flew to meet the Emperor Maximilian on his entry into Nuremberg on the 7th of June, 1470. After soaring aloft in the air, Ramus informs us, the eagle met the emperor at some distance from the city, then returned and perched upon the city gate where it awaited the emperor’s approach. On his arrival the bird stretched out its wings and saluted him by bowing.