M. Maillardet has executed an automaton which both writes and draws.

The figure of a boy kneeling on one knee holds a pencil in his hand. When the figure begins to work, an attendant dips the pencil in ink, and adjusts the drawing-paper upon a brass tablet. Upon touching a spring, the figure proceeds to write, and when the line is finished, its hand returns to dot and stroke the letters when necessary. In this manner it executes four beautiful pieces of writing in French and English, and three landscapes, all of which occupy about one hour. One of the most popular pieces of mechanism which we have seen is the magician constructed by M. Maillardet for the purpose of answering certain given questions. A figure dressed like a magician appears seated at the bottom of a wall, holding a wand in one hand, and a book in the other. A number of questions ready prepared are inscribed on oval medallions, and the spectator takes any of these which he chooses, and to which he wishes an answer, and having placed it in a drawer ready to receive it, the drawer shuts with a spring till the answer is returned. The magician then rises from his seat, bows his head, describes circles with his wand, and, consulting the book as if in deep thought, he lifts it towards his face. Having thus appeared to ponder over the proposed question, he raises his wand, and striking with it the wall above his head, two folding-doors fly open, and display an appropriate answer to the question. The doors again close, the magician resumes his original position, and the drawer opens to return the medallion. There are twenty of these medallions, all containing different questions, to which the magician returns the most suitable and striking answers. The medallions are thin plates of brass of an elliptical form, exactly resembling each other. Some of the medallions have a question inscribed on each side, both of which the magician answers in succession. If the drawer is shut without a medallion being put into it, or if a _blank_ medallion, viz., one which contains no question, is put into the drawer, the magician rises, consults his book, shakes his head, and resumes his seat. The folding-doors remain shut, and the drawer is returned empty. If two medallions are put into the drawer together, an answer is returned only to the lower one. When the machinery is wound up, the movements continue about an hour, during which time about fifty questions may be answered. The method by which the different medallions acted upon the machinery, so as to produce the proper answers to the questions which they bore, was of course kept a secret by the inventor, but it was discovered by Mr. Brockedon, who has kindly communicated to me an account of it. Upon examining the edge of the circular medallions, Mr. Brockedon discovered in all of them, except the blanks, a small hole almost concealed by the milling. This led Mr. Brockedon to examine the receptacle for the medallion in the drawer, and he observed the edge of a pin flush with the edge of the receptacle, whence the pin was protruded by the machine into the holes in the medallion, the depth of the hole regulating the answer. In order to prove this, Mr. B. cut a slip from a cedar pencil small enough to enter easily the holes in the medallion, if he found them to be of different depths. As the blank medallions had no hole, and produced only a shake of the magician’s head, Mr. B. took a medallion with a question, and having plugged the hole with a bit of cedar, he cut it flush, and having placed it in the receptacle, the conjuror shook his head, and thus bore testimony to the truth of Mr. Brockedon’s discovery.