The Old and the New Magic

part in the comedy, for a money consideration. However, Decremps was

an able man, who could act with as much shrewdness as energy. In 1785 he followed his first book with a second, explaining Pinetti’s newest tricks, the self-playing organ, artificial snakes and birds, chess-playing automatons, ascending balloons in human shape, perpetual motion, learned animals, automatic flute pla...