Volant automata, as he calls them, did not escape the attentive consideration of Bishop Wilkins, and he says enough on this class of mechanical curiosities to have stimulated the mechanical ingenuity of even a less enthusiastic inventor than the Marquis of Worcester, as of the wooden dove of Archytas, and the wooden eagle and iron fly of Regiomontanus. The Marquis, if he ever perused the little treatise just quoted, would be keenly alive to the truthfulness of the remark that--“it is none of the meanest discouragements, that any strange inventions are so generally derided by common opinion, being esteemed only as the dreams of a melancholy and distempered fancy; for that saying of Virgil, “Demens qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen,” &c. “hath been an old censure applied unto such as ventured upon any strange or incredible attempt.”--See Math. Magick, 1648, p. 198. The Rev. Dr. Powell, in the last chapter of his “Humane Industry,” 1661, treats of various minute automata as--“Certain sports and extravagancies of art,” for which he offers an ingenious apology, observing: “As nature hath her _ludicra_, so art hath hers too; that is, some pretty knacks that are made, not so much for use, as to show subtilty of wit, being made _de Gaieté de Cœur_, and for pastime as it were; yet the workmanship and elegancy of these may justly deserve admiration;” concluding--“art, as well as nature, is never more wonderful than in smaller pieces.” After describing small chains, locks, chariots, ships, clocks, and insects, he remarks:--“though these knacks are but little useful, and take up more time than needed to be lost, yet they discover a marvellous pregnancy of wit in the artificers; and may be _experimenta lucifera_, if not _frugifera_ hints of greater matters.” It will not appear strange to find the inventor of the steam engine engaged toying with an artificial bird, an imprisoning chair, a brazen head, or a riding horse, when it is remembered that for a hundred years later such automata were highly prized by the nobility and gentry, and proved extemely lucrative to the public exhibitors of such mechanical imitations of life. M. Vaucanson’s inventions were of this chararcter, attracting admiring audiences among the learned and the vulgar, on the Continent and in England. A learned society received his communication in Paris, while in London it had the unquestionable honour of being translated by Dr. Desaguliers, who says in his preface, “In giving this paper an English dress, I am still acting in my province, which has been for many years to explain the works of art, as well as the phenomena of nature;” and his translation is given under the following elaborate title:--