Ingenious as these pieces of mechanism are, they sink into insignificance when compared with the machinery of M. Vaucanson, which had previously astonished all Europe. His two principal automata were the flute-player, and the pipe and tabor-player. The flute-player was completed in 1736, and wherever it was exhibited it produced the greatest sensation. When it came to Paris it was received with great suspicion. The French savants recollected the story of M. Raisin, the organist of Troyes, who exhibited an automaton player upon the harpsichord, which astonished the French court by the variety of its powers. The curiosity of the king could not be restrained, and in consequence of his insisting upon examining the mechanism, there was found in the figure a pretty little musician five years of age. It was natural, therefore, that a similar piece of mechanism should be received with some distrust; but this feeling was soon removed by M. Vaucanson, who exhibited and explained to a committee of the Academy of Sciences the whole of the mechanism. This learned body was astonished at the ingenuity which it displayed; and they did not hesitate to state, that the machinery employed for producing the sounds of the flute performed in the most exact manner the very operations of the most expert flute-player, and that the artist had imitated the effects produced, and the means employed by nature, with an accuracy which exceeded all expectation. In 1738, M. Vaucanson published a memoir, approved of by the Academy, in which he gave a full description of the machinery employed, and of the principles of its construction. Following this memoir, I shall therefore attempt to give as popular a description of the automaton as can be done without lengthened details and numerous figures. The body of the flute-player was about 5½ feet high, and was placed upon a piece of rock, surrounding a square pedestal 4½ feet high by 3½ feet wide. When the panel which formed the front of the pedestal was opened, there was seen on the right a clock movement, which, by the aid of several wheels, gave a rotatory motion to a steel axis about 2½ feet long, having cranks at six equidistant points of its length, but lying in different directions. To each crank was attached a cord, which descended and was fixed by its other end to the upper board of a pair of bellows, 2½ feet long and 6 inches wide. Six pair of bellows arranged along the bottom of the pedestal were then wrought, or made to blow in succession, by turning the steel axis. At the upper face of the pedestal, and upon each pair of bellows is a double pulley, one of whose rims is 3 inches in diameter, and the other 1½. The cord which proceeds from the crank coils round the smaller of these pulleys, and that which is fixed to the upper board of the bellows goes round the larger pulley. By this means the upper board of the bellows is made to rise higher than if the cords went directly from them to the cranks.