But the highly popular work of Hero of Alexandria promulgated several similar schemes. He shows how to make an artificial bird sing by flowing water, or alternately sing and be silent. See Mr. Woodcroft’s handsome edition of Hero’s Pneumatics, 4to. 1851.
William Bourne, also, in his “Inventions or Devices,” 1578, treats of “birds of wood or metal made by art to fly,” and of others, “to sing sweetly at certain hours appointed.”
Bate, in his “Mysteries of Nature and Art,” 1635, treats, at page 24, “How to make that a bird sitting on a basis, shall make a noise, and drink out of a cup of water, being held to the mouth of it;” and further, “Advice whereby several voices of birds chirping may be heard.”
So again Isaac De Caus, in his “Rare Inventions of Water Works,” folio, 1659, at page 20, gives instructions—“To counterfeit the voice of small birds by means of water and air.” And in Plate XIV. “To represent divers birds which shall sing diversly when an owl turns towards them; and when the said owl turns back again they shall cease their singing.”
These later examples show that the Marquis was neither altogether original nor singular in attempting improvements in these automatic toys, which from the time of Hero of Alexandria were accounted sufficiently wonderful evidence of mechanical ingenuity to attract the serious attention of even the most talented engineers of the last century. Of such mechanical achievements of the ingenious a full account may be read in Montucla’s edition of Ozanam’s “Mathematical Recreations.”
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.”