What can be deduced from so slight and transient a public view of this apparatus ? —very little. It seems RS if the greatest skill had been exerted in producing the mechanical effects, a nd that the communi cation ofthe play-er (Anthon) with the ap paratus may be a riddle of no great depth. The sixteen pulls from the barrel may bear some relation to the eight rows of squares, twice taken for the two sides, the white and the black ; and as the moves are all reducible to those of the ca.stle of the bishop, from which they differ in ex tent of shift only, (except that of the knight, which is an immediate combination of both) we may guess tliat the pull might determine the line to be played in, and the quadrant the distance from the back row. But it is useless to extend our con jectures, with such scanty means.
The same Baron Kempelin exhibited, in his private parlour, a small speaking in strument or organ, which lie said was not then in a finished state. It was a kind of box, which he brought out and placed upon a table. Speaking without notes from the recollection of four and twenty years now elapsed, I judge its dimensions were about two feet in length, one foot wide, and. eight or nine inches deep. It was open ; but we were prevented from seeing the inside by a cloth put over it.
The Baron put his hands under the cloth, so that his right arm was disposed longitu dinally in the box, and seemed to press a pair of bellows : the other hand was put in crosswise at the end, near the place of the right hand, and seemed to be employ ed with keys, or some apparatus, or per haps both hands may have been so em ployed. When he made the instrument speak, he raised his right elbow, and gra dually pressing it down, the sound was heard. It was monotonous, as if from a single pipe; about the pitch of D, above the middle C, concert pitch; and the words ma and mama w ere uttered very distinctly, in a slow drawlingmanner; that is to say, there was a want of the usual inflections of ton e, and the sound fell off in intensity towards the end. After several other words had been spoken, a lady asked in French, if it could not speak sentences, and the Baron asked what it should say. She answered " Que. je mechante,b and the instrument said " Vous cies mechante,muis -Emus des anssi bonne." Kratzenstein has given some account of the principles of an engine of this kind, in a work extracted in the Journal de Physique : and Dr. Young has cursorily mehtioned this subject in his lectures, with some diagrams.