It is a remarkable fact that not one of Müller’s contemporaries, who often refer to this learned man and to his great accomplishments, makes any reference to these pieces of mechanism, and Peter Ramus was not born until forty-five years after, but they are referred to by Baptista Porta, Gassendi, Lana, and Bishop Wilkins, who, however, differ considerably in their dates. Strada, in his “De Bello Belgico,” tells us that the Emperor Charles V., after his abdication in 1556, took a most keen interest in automata of various kinds, and he employed a very skilful artist, Janellus Turrianus, of Cremona, to construct them for him. This mechanic made figures of horsemen which marched along the table, played upon flutes and drums, and entered into combat with one another, and he exhibited wooden birds which flew up to their nests (they must, I think, have been _wood pigeons_). This Janellus Turrianus was evidently a very wonderful man, for he made a corn-mill so small that it could be concealed in a glove, and yet could grind in a day as much corn as would supply eight men with food. I never saw this machine myself, and I cannot help thinking that either the glove must have been rather large or the appetites of the men must have been rather small. Apart, however, from the exaggeration of the genius of this man, he was undoubtedly a most skilful mechanician, for he repaired and considerably improved a most complex clock constructed by Wilhelm Zelandin for the city of Padua, in which moving figures and astronomical phenomena were represented. The addition to clocks of automata set in motion by the train was a very favourite occupation of the horologists of the sixteenth century. Of these clocks perhaps the most celebrated was that at Strasburg, which was constructed by Conrad Dasypodius. This clock was finished in the year 1573. Apart from its interesting representations of various celestial phenomena, it is remarkable for the number of moving figures which embellish it, and which perform various functions; above the dial the four ages of man are represented by symbolical figures; one passes every quarter of an hour, marking the quarter by striking on a bell; the first quarter is struck by a child with an apple, the second by a youth with an arrow, the third by a man with his staff, and the fourth by an old man with his crutch. After these follows the figure of Death, who, after sounding the hour on a large bell, is expelled by a figure representing Christ, while two small angels are set into motion, the one striking a bell with a sceptre, while the other turns over an hour-glass at the expiration of an hour. There are, besides, various animals, and among them a cock, which flaps its wings and crows just before the clock strikes the hour.