How to light a Fire and a Candle at what hour of the night one awaketh, without rising or putting ones hand out of the bed. And the same thing[7] becomes[8] a serviceable Pistol at pleasure; yet by a stranger, not knowing the secret, seemeth but a dexterous Tinder-box.
Footnotes
[7]to be a. P.
[8]becomes to be.
[A most conceited Tinder-box.] The following note from “Humane Industry,” 1661, appears highly suggestive of such an instrument, although the Marquis’s invention is more elaborate. “Andrew Alciat the great Civilian of France, had a kind of Clock in his chamber, that should awake him at any hour of the night that he determined, and when it struck the determined hour, it struck fire likewise out of a flint, which fell among tinder, to light him a candle: it was the invention of one Caravagio of Sienna in Italy.”
How to make an artificial Bird to fly which way and as long as one pleaseth, by or against the wind, sometimes chirping, other times hovering, still tending the way it is designed for.
[An artificial Bird.] The third article in his list of a portion of his inventions supplies a different reading, thus: “By this (his ‘quint-essence of motion’) I can make an artificial bird to fly which way, and as long as I please.” [[Appendix A.]]
The Marquis, not to be behind the curious and ingenious men of ancient times, has here and in article No. 18, emulated John Muller of Nuremberg, better known as Regiomontanus, who was born in 1436. He is celebrated for this species of rara avis; a self-moving and flying eagle, and an iron fly have afforded much matter for romantic and no doubt exaggerated accounts of their performances; the one flying a good way in the open air and returning; the other flying from the philosopher round a table and coming back to his hand. He evinced a genius of the first order as a great inventor, and also as a promoter of the advancement of science.
In Ramelli’s great work on various machines, folio, 1588, the 187th figure offers a detailed representation of a handsomely furnished apartment, in which a large carved sideboard sustains a gigantic vase containing a flowering shrub, in the branches of which six birds appear in the act of singing. The vase being a sectional drawing, various pipes can be seen, also the performer behind, who is blowing through a single pipe into the body of the vase.