In the year 1772 there was in Spring Gardens, near Charing Cross, a most remarkable collection of automata exhibited in a place of entertainment known as Cox’s Museum, and here I have an original copy of the “_Descriptive catalogue, of the several superb and magnificent pieces of mechanism and jewellery exhibited in Mr. Cox’s Museum, at Spring Gardens, Charing Cross_.” To which this footnote is added, “_Hours of Admission, 11, 2, and 7, every day (Sundays excepted), tickets Half a Guinea each, admitting one person, to be had at Mr. Cox’s, No. 103, Shoe Lane_.” This was a very extraordinary exhibition, and contained upwards of twenty large and elaborate automata, several of them being adorned with gold and precious stones. Some were complicated clocks, some were large groups of animals, and figures with fountains and cascades around them. None of these objects was less than nine feet high, and some were as high as sixteen feet. I can find nothing important enough from a Mechanick’s point of view, to describe in detail, but it was the precursor in the same place of the exhibition of Monsieur Maillardet, which was one of the London attractions at the beginning of the present century. M. Maillardet exhibited a bird automaton (similar to that already referred to which was made by Le Droz), and whose performance lasted four minutes with one winding up. He constructed also a spider, entirely of steel, which imitated all the actions of the real animal, it ran round and round the table in a spiral line, tending towards the centre. Maillardet made automata representing a caterpillar, a mouse, a lizard, and a serpent; the last crawled about all over the table, darted its tongue in and out, and produced a hissing sound. Maillardet’s most important automata were, however, his drawing and writing figure, and his pianoforte player. The former was a kneeling boy, who wrote in ink with an ordinary pen, sentences in English and in French, and drew landscapes. The pianist was a figure of a lady, who performed eighteen pieces of music. She began by bowing to the audience, her bosom heaved, and her eyes first looked at the music, and then followed the motion of her fingers, and the music was produced by the keys being played on by the fingers; but the most remarkable of M. Maillardet’s machines, was a magician, or fortune-teller, which gave answers to some twenty given questions, which were inscribed on as many counters or medallions. One of these medallions having been put into a drawer, the figure arose from his seat, bowed to the audience, and described mystic circles in the air with his wand; after appearing to consult his book of mysteries, he struck a little door behind him, which flew open, and exhibited an appropriate answer to the question on the medallion.