There was at this time at Grange Park, near Edinburgh, a house called the _House of Curiosities_, the owner of which made an exhibition of it, and professed to have new articles on view every month of the passing summer. A colloquy between Quentin and Andrew[126] gives an account of it, from which it appears that one of the most prominent articles was the ingenious lock above described. Another was the aforementioned writing-engine, but now described as calculated to produce fifteen or sixteen copies by one effort with the pen, and so proving ‘an excellent medium between printing and the common way of writing.’ A third was thus described by Andrew: ‘They took me up to a darkened room, where, having a hole bored through the window, about an inch in diameter, upon which they had fixed a convex lens, the objects that were really without were represented within, with their proper shapes, colours, and motions, reversed, upon a white board, so that, it being a very clear sunshiny day, I saw men, women, and children walking upon the road with their feet upwards; and they told me, the clearer the day, it does the better.’ It may be inferred with tolerable confidence that this House of Curiosities was a speculation of James Young, the inventor of the lock and writing-engine. It is curious to trace the feeling of strangeness expressed in this brochure towards scientific toys with which we are now familiar. Much is made of a _Magical Lantern_, whereby pictures of Scaramouch, Actæon, and Diana, and twenty others, ‘little broader than a ducatoon,’ are ‘magnified as big as a man.’ _Eolus’s Fiddle_, which, being hung in a window, ‘gives a pleasant sound like an organ, and a variety of notes all the day over,’ is descanted upon with equal gusto. ‘Sometimes it gives little or no satisfaction,’ Andrew admits; ‘but when I was there, it happened to do very well.’ There is also a very animated account of a machine for telling how far you have travelled—the modern and well-known pedometer. [Sidenote: 1694.] One of the articles for the month of June was of such a kind that, if reproduced, it would even now be original and surprising. It is a _Horizontal Elastic Pacing Saddle_—horizontal, because it had four pins to keep it level; elastic, because of four steel springs; and pacing, because designed to make one have the sensation and experiences of pacing while in reality trotting. ‘I saw it tried by three or four gentlemen, who all gave good approbation of it.’ Another of the June articles serves to shew that the principle of the _revolver_ is no new invention. It is here called _David Dun’s Machine_, being a gun composed of ten barrels, with forty breeches adapted to the ends of the barrels, ‘somewhat like that of a rifled gun.’ ‘The breeches are previously charged, and in half a minute you may wheel them all about by tens, and fire them through the ten barrels.’