Still lower was the shadow portrait to fall, when another contrivance was invented to trick the public into the belief that magic played a part in producing the likeness. An automatic figure was taken round the country which it was claimed could draw silhouettes. Somewhere about 1826 the automaton was brought to Newcastle, and is described as a figure seated in flowing robes with a style in the right hand, which by machinery scratched an outline of a profile on card, which the exhibitor professed to fill up in black. The person whose likeness was to be taken sat at one side of the figure, near a wall. “One of our party,” says an eye-witness, “detected an opening in the wall, through which a man’s eye was visible. This man, no doubt, drew the profile, and not the automaton. Ladies’ heads were relieved by pencillings of gold.” The son of the great, little Madame Tussaud, who began her wax modelling in the Palais Royal in the days of the French Revolution, taking death-masks of many of the guillotine victims, thus advertises in 1823:—“J. P. Tussaud (son of Madame T.) respectfully informs the nobility, gentry, and the public in general, that he has a machine by which he takes profile likenesses. Price, 2s. to 7s., according to style.” This machine was probably of the kind described by Blenkinsopp in _Notes and Queries_:—“A long rod worked in a movable fulcrum, with a pencil at one end and a small iron rod at the other, was the apparatus. He passed the rod over the face and head, and the pencil at the other end reproduced the outline on a card, afterwards filled in with lamp-black.” It is probable that Edward Ward Foster, who described himself as “Profilist from London,” used such a machine, which he thus describes:—“The construction and simplicity of this machine render it one of the most ingenious inventions of the present day, as it is impossible in its delineation to differ from the outlines of the original, even the breadth of a hair. “Mr. F. wishes the public to understand that, besides sketching profiles, this machine will make a complete etching on copper-plate, by which means any person can take any number he thinks proper, at any time, from the etched plate; and for the further satisfaction of the public, he will most respectfully return the money paid if the likeness is not good. Profiles in black at 5s. and upwards, etc. Derby, January 1, 1811.” Mr. West, miniature and profile painter, from London, worked with the same machine. His prices were:—profiles on card, in black, 5s.; in colours, 10s. 6d.; on ivory, in colours, one guinea and upwards. We have succeeded in tracing the recorded description of one of the sitters who actually had a portrait taken by such an instrument, and also one who saw such an instrument as late as 1879. The account is by Mr. H. Hems, Fair Park, Exeter, and brings our tale of mechanical contrivances in connection with silhouette portraiture to a fitting close:—