The mechanism it certainly was that held my attention first.  It
was one of those complicated fabrics that have since been called
handling-machines, and the study of which has already given such an
enormous impetus to terrestrial invention.  As it dawned upon me
first, it presented a sort of metallic spider with five jointed,
agile legs, and with an extraordinary number of jointed levers, bars,
and reaching and clutching tentacles about its body.  Most of its
arms were retracted, but with three long tentacles it was fishing
out a number of rods, plates, and bars which lined the covering and
apparently strengthened the walls of the cylinder.  These, as it
extracted them, were lifted out and deposited upon a level surface
of earth behind it.