When the sun was in the sign of the Zodiac the eyes of this automaton melted metals, on which the characters of the same sign were traced. This intelligent machine was equally gifted with motion and speech, and it revealed to Albertus Magnus some of his most important secrets. Unfortunately, St. Thomas Aquinas, Albertus’s pupil, taking this statue for the handiwork of the devil, smashed it with a big stick. As a finale to these fables, which are well fitted to figure among the marvels performed by Perrault’s fairies, I will quote from page 252 of the “Journal des Savants” for 1677: “The artificial man of Reysolius, a statue so resembling the human form, that, with the exception of the operations of the soul, everything that takes place in the body may be witnessed.” What a pity the mechanician stopped so soon! for it would have cost him so little, while making so exquisite a resemblance to the fairest work of the Creator, to add to his automaton a soul moving by clockwork! This quotation does much honor to the savants who accepted the responsibility of such a statement, and is a further proof how history is written. It may be easily supposed these works furnished me no guide to the art I so much wished to study; and although I continued my inquiries, I only attained the unsatisfactory result that nothing serious had been written on the subject of automata. “What!” I said to myself, “can it be possible that the marvellous science which raised Vaucanson’s name so high--the science whose ingenious combinations can animate inert matter, and impart to it a species of existence--is the only one without its archives?” When about to give up the subject in despair, I stumbled on a memoir of the inventor of the “Automaton Duck.” This memoir, bearing date 1738, is addressed by the author to the members of the Academy of Sciences. In it will be found a learned description of his flute-player, as well as a report of the Academy, which I here transcribe. _Extract from the Registers of the Royal Academy of Sciences for April 30, 1738_: