The first horseless machine was encumbered with levers, pedals, handles and wheels necessary for its guidance, and with taps and grease-valves to turn, which were indispensable for the functioning of the engine. Now, each generation of motor-cars has dispensed with these more and more completely. One by one, almost all those handles have disappeared which require the incessant intervention of man. In our days, by means of its organs which have become automatic, the mechanism controls the mechanism. A chauffeur is no more than a pilot; once going, his machine keeps up its own energy; once awake, it will only fall asleep again at the word of command. In short, as Lerne bade me note, the modern motor-car enjoys properties that a spinal cord might confer; it enjoys instinct and reflex actions. Spontaneous movements take place in it along with the voluntary movements caused by the intelligence of the driver, who becomes as it were the brain of the vehicle. It is from this intelligence that the orders for definite actions go, transmitted by the metallic nerves to the steel muscles. “Moreover,” said my uncle, “the resemblance between this machine and the body of a vertebrate animal is striking.” Here Lerne was entering his own domain. I lent an attentive ear, and he went on: “We have here the nervous and muscular systems represented by the striker-rods, the driving-gear and the cranks. And the _châssis_, Nicolas, what is it but the skeleton into which the tenants insert themselves like tendons? Blood, the vital element, circulates in those copper arteries in the form of petrol. The carburetor breathes; it’s a lung; instead of combining air with blood, it mixes it with the vapor of the petrol, that’s all! This hood resembles a _thorax_ in which life beats rhythmically--our joints move in the _synovia_ as those swivel-joints in oil. Under the shelter of the resisting skin of the case is the tank, a stomach that grows hungry and is replenished. Here, phosphorescent like those of cats, but _as yet_ void of sight, are eyes, its lamps; its voice is the hooter; and--but I need not go into further details. In a word, Nicolas, the only thing wanting to your car is brain, which you sometimes supply; having that it would become a great deaf beast, blind, insensitive and sterile, without the sense of taste or of smell.” “A regular collection of infirmities,” I said, bursting into a loud laugh. “Hum!” rejoined Lerne, “in other respects the motor-car is better off than we. Think how the water cools it; what a remedy against fever! And then what a time the engine can last, if it is wisely used! It can be mended indefinitely--it can always be cured; have you not just restored speech to its maw? You could replace an eye just as easily!” The Professor was getting excited: