The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-03-05
CLOCKS OF LONG AGO.
Those With Bells Date Back fc Four
 teenth Century in France.

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 teenth Century in France.
 In primitive times man was sta tioned at the top of the belfry to ring the bells at the indicated hours, day and night, writes Alfred Beiiard Tn L'Horiogere, This watchman was called the horoscopes. that Is to say. the ob- server of the hour. He had recourse himself. in order to fulfil his duty. to the study of the astral system to the number of prayers he was to recite, to the quantity of wax candle had con- sumed, to the clepsydra, or water clock, and to the hour glass. The trade of the horoscopus was inevitably one of the first which the progressso me- chanism was to cause to disappear.
 The first clocks with bells known in France date back to the fourteenth century. Particular mention IS made of one of which was established Tn Caen in 1914, by Beaumont, and that of the Palais dc Justice in Paris, which King Charles V had constructed in 1870 by the German clockmaker Henri de Vic.
 This machine seemed so marvellous that the inhabitants of Paris so goes the legend, asked permissionl of the Rink to assure themselves that 1t was the clock and not the watchman that rang the hours.
 This astonishment of the people at d period when mechanism was but just born may we'll be conceived in presence of a machine capable of calculating and striking the hours. without the assist ance of any human being, with the same precision that could be exercised by the most vigi1ant horoseopus.
 The custom was perpetuated until the seventeenth century and still exists In certain cities of Europe of placing alongside of the clocks various automa- tons which rang the hours. It Is due to nothing else than thought of recall ling to memory the recollection of the ancient watchman.
 And also tho clocks with autenatons catered to the popular taste of that epoch. The people of that period pre- occupied themselves but little with the more or less exact measurement Of time. Railroads were not in existence and the exigencIes of life were not so great as they, are now. A cock which erowed and Tapped It's wings. some apostles who marched by striking 8 blow for each hour, filled them with admiration, and in this respect no other clocks aroused so much enthusiasm as those of Lyons and Strasburg.
 It was a clock of this character that Henri Deux placed oyer the superb portal of the Chateau. of Anet. Never theless this timepiece was distinguished from other clocks with automatoNs by the originality of the figures that it set In movement. Here no longer was woman or a man who struck the hours with rusty arms. It was majesty stag, standing erect. surrounded, by four blood hounds of natural size. which appeared to be holding 1t at bay, that one saw on the summit of the portal. One of the stag's legs was movable, and as 1t was lifted it seemed to strike the hours. The four hounds opened their jaws at each striking of the quar- ters, and their voices were initiated by bells of different notes, whose clappers were connected by wires with their lower jaws, causing them to open and shut as long as the bell ringing mech anism continued.
 This curious. clock exists no longer. It was sold at auction with its finest dials for the sum of 505 francs when the Chateau of Anet was confiscated as national property and sold with it's furniture in the year two of the first republic.