An artificial Horse, with Saddle and Caparizons fit for running at[3] the Ring, on which a man being mounted, with his Lance in his hand, he can at pleasure make him start, and swiftly to run his career, using the decent posture[4] with bon grace, may take the Ring as handsomly, and running as swiftly as if he rode upon a Barbe.
Footnotes
[3]at—omitted.
[4]postures.
[An artificiall Ring-horse.] The nearest approach to this automaton was that of a mechanical horse, the invention of Colonel De Hamel, of the Wurtemberg Cavalry. This was, until lately, exhibited at Mason’s establishment, Piccadilly, but is now in Germany. It is made of wood, covered with a natural skin, and contains machinery which can be operated by a lever to produce any variety of action, from that of the most gentle to the fiercest of an unruly horse. But the animal possesses no locomotive power, being restrained to one spot by a strong pillar underneath, working at the centre in a cup-and-ball joint, so that it can fall sideways, backwards, or forwards, unless prevented by equestrian skill; it was, however, more than master of the greater number of many excellent horsemen who subjected themselves to its astonishing gambols.
The Marquis’s automaton was possibly intended for a kind of circus, and we may suppose that a strong post being in the centre, a long wooden bar was so placed across it as to revolve—with the horse attached to one end, and a weight or counterpoise on the other extremity, motion being given to the horse’s legs by internal machinery, and acting to propel it so long as the rider pleased, or the mechanism permitted.
92.
A scrue made like a Water-scrue, but the bottom made of Iron-plate Spade-wise, which at the side of a Boat emptieth the mud of a Pond, or raiseth Gravel.
[A Gravel Engine.] The principle of the modern dredging machine is to be seen in Besson’s “Theatrum Instrumentorum et Machinarum,” 1578, where about 25 hampers or buckets are attached to two endless chains passing over two drums, one at the bottom of two strong inclined poles, the other at the top of the same, where a workman turns it by means of an ordinary winch applied to an endless screw; while labourers below are actively filling the ascending vessels. The Marquis may have had in view to make each bucket dig up its own supply of gravel, &c. as indeed is the present practice.
This antiquated dredging machine, in some other form, had been contemplated in 1558. The Petition of George Cobham, Tomazo Chanata, and others, was presented to Queen Elizabeth, for the sole use of an engine to cleanse and carry away all shelves of sand, banks, &c. out of all rivers, creeks, and havens.—See Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1547–1580. Edited by R. Lemon, F.S.A. 8vo. 1856, page 119, No. 56.