The great clock at Lyons, the work of Lippius of Basle, is hardly less interesting. Besides exhibiting mechanical illustrations of astronomical phenomena, a complete cycle of operations representing scriptural events is performed. Before each hour strikes a cock comes forward and crows three times, after which angels appear, who by striking upon a gamut of bells ring out the air of a hymn, and this is followed by a moving group illustrating the Annunciation of the Virgin and the descent of a dove, and the cycle is completed by the striking of the hour. In the Royal Palace of Versailles there was a very curious clock, the work of Martinot, a clockmaker of the seventeenth century. Before it struck the hour two cocks flapped their wings and crowed alternately, then two little doors opened and a figure came out of each carrying a gong which was struck by armed guards with their clubs. These figures having retired, a door in the centre opened and an equestrian figure of Louis XIV. came out. At the same time a group of clouds separated giving passage to the figure of Fame which hovered over the head of the king. An air was then chimed upon the bells, after which the figures retired; the two guards raised their clubs and the hour was struck. In the year 1788, Agostino Ramelli published his important work “_Le diverse ed artificiose Machine_,” and I have reproduced some of the plates in that beautiful book, a copy of which is before me (one of which, Fig. 17, see _Frontispiece_, I have chosen to adorn the menu which is on the table, for no other reason than that it appeared especially appropriate as figurative of the desire of your humble Mechanick to be for ever associated with Ye Sette of Odd Volumes). [Illustration: Fig. 18.] In the next illustration (Fig. 18) we have a beautiful plate from Ramelli, in which another of Hero’s inventions, the group of singing birds is introduced as an ornament in an elaborately furnished room of the period. In this case the water is in the first instance lifted by air being blown in through a pipe by a person concealed behind the wall which in the drawing is broken away to show a mediæval old buffer engaged in this manly performance. About the middle of the seventeenth century magnetism began to be employed for producing the effects of magic, and that extraordinary versatile all-round Odd Volume, Athanasius Kircher, in his “Magnes sive de Arte Magnetica,” which was published in 1641 (a copy of which I have here), describes and illustrates several automata which depend for their action upon magnetism. Here, for example (Fig. 19), he gives a representation of the Dove of Archytas, which by the action of a revolving loadstone, is made to fly around a dial and mark the hours by pointing to the figures on its edge. [Illustration: Fig. 20.]