Chapter IV: Appendix (3)

It is done, of course, by doubling the flat card till the slip can be pulled through the pipe-stem, when one of the square wings will go through it, and the release follows naturally.

TRIUMPHANT COLUMN.

Take a number of smooth true cylinders, of metal or hard wood, and, by carefully placing one upon another, rear a slender column. If the ground is firm and level, such a pillar may attain a somewhat astonishing height.

A PRETTY TRICK IN BALANCING.

Put an orange, apple, or other tempting object fifteen inches from the wall, and present it to any one who can pick it up while standing against the wall, or rather while keeping his legs against it. Or, again, challenge whoever has been distinguishing himself in agility to keep upright on the inner leg while sidewise against a wall.

Then—as probably you will be asked to perform some feat yourself after having thus set impossible tasks to others—put a cork in a bottle. Drive a large pin into it horizontally, and, having previously stuck two steel forks opposite each other in a second cork, with their handles inclining downwards, and run the head of a needle into the bottom of this cork, set the needle point on the pin’s head, when the forkified cork will be delicately balanced, and may even be turned round without falling.

THE ANGULAR PUZZLE.

Cut a piece of cardboard into the form of, and of equal proportions to, the figure given here, after which, produce, with the same, three successive pyramidal or angular boxes, alternately bearing the respective numbers of 7, 6, and 5 corners, still keeping the cardboard in one piece. After cutting the card half through at the dotted lines, so that it will bend more squarely, bring the ends of 1—2 and 3—4 together; bend the whole in the middle at 5—6: fold 1—2 and 3—4 over one another, and the six-cornered box is formed. By again placing the angular sections inwards, the box will be finished. If larger, gum the parts as you fold them, and a curious box will be the result; if covered with Dutch metal so as to conceal all the seams, it may be a puzzle-box indeed.

THE POSTS AND PADDOCK PUZZLES.

I have a paddock found, which is neither square nor round,
But an octagon; and this I have laid out
In a novel way, though plain in appearance, and retain
Three posts in each compartment; but I doubt
Whether you discover how I apportioned it, e’en though
I inform you ’tis divided into four.
But, if you solve it right, ’twill afford you much delight,
And repay you for the trouble, I am sure.

THE LANDLORD TRICKED.

Twenty-one persons sat down to dinner at an inn, with the landlord at the head of the table. When dinner was finished it was resolved that one of the number should pay the whole score; to be decided as follows. A person should commence counting the company, and every seventh man was to rise from his seat, until all were counted out but one, who was to be the individual who should pay the whole bill. One of the waiters was fixed upon to count the company out, who, owing his master a grudge, resolved to make him the person who should have to pay. How must he proceed to accomplish this?

_Explanation._—Commence with the sixth from the landlord. You illustrate with counters.

THE DIVIDED ORCHARDS.

To a house where dwell four persons, (see the windows to their rooms) is an orchard; each man wishes to enclose his two fruit-trees in a space equal to his neighbour’s. The dotted lines show the position of the hedges.

THE OBLONG PUZZLE.

Having cut up a square of card by the lines shown, reform it. By remembering how to form one quarter of the figure, the whole will be so simplified that you can perform it under the spectator’s eyes with a rapidity which will bewilder them.

THE ONE-QUARTERLESS SQUARE.

To divide a square less one-quarter, triangularly shaped, into four parts of the same shape and size, follow the lines here described.

COUNTER PUZZLE.

Place eight counters as here given:

O O O O O O O O
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

The puzzle is to play them in twos, taking up only one at a time, and, each time, skipping two with the one in your hand. Answer: Put 4 on 7, 6 on 2, 1 on 3, 8 on 5; or, 5 on 2, 3 on 7, 8 on 6, 4 on 1, &c. For ten, put the 4th on the 1st, the 6th on the 9th, the 8th upon the 3rd, the 2nd on the 5th, and the 7th on the 10th.

XIII.—TRICKS IN THE WATER.

THE FANE OF AQUARIUS.

Make a stand with a box upon it, having the roof and front of an ancient temple, the front of the stand being in steps leading up to the porch. This conceals a simple apparatus of glass tubes, receivers and siphons.

The four tubes are shown just above and below the bends, so as to appear to be solid glass pillars. The water from the upper reservoir fills them in running to find its level in the other container. Little figures are made of wax and pith, two having cork in their heads, two leaden feet, and they are placed in the tubes alternately. A valve below prevents them sinking, and a fine hair prevents them rising into the bends. On the water being let flow, the figures are imbued with motion, and their rising and falling will greatly puzzle the spectators, for the fluid is not seen to run.

WATER RISING ABOVE ITS LEVEL.

Take two panes of common window-glass, about six inches square, set them together at one side, and at the other side prevent them exactly joining by a little wax, so that the two planes form a very small angle, as one or two degrees. Then place the bottom edge about an inch down into a dish of water, when the water will rise between the panes in the form of a hyperbola.

WATER IN PERPETUAL MOTION.

There is shown to the audience a singular instrument composed of glass, two bulbs connected by two tubes.

Water, which may be tinctured with indigo for the better effect, flows from the bulb A very slowly into the bulb B, whence it quickly and plainly runs up by the tortuous tubing, so thin as to scarcely let a hair pass through it back into the bulb A. The drops of ascending water are separated by air bubbles, so that the current can be clearly studied.

Now, though the laws of nature forbid that water can by any power in itself lift itself up to the height of the reservoir originally holding it, here seems a contradiction. For a time, friction and the resistance of the air appears to be done away with. But this paradox is readily accounted for after close watching.

It will be found that the descending liquid does not ascend from ball B into the winding tube without part of it being left in that ball. It is this filling the space which gradually forces the air upwards (since it cannot go down through the column of water from A). The only cause of the liquid rising beyond B is its being filled, and once it is full the movement must stop.

The same appearances of drops of water divided by air bubbles is shown in the windows of filter-dealers, who use great lengths of bent glass piping for the purpose of display; but a small force-pump is the active agent as regards their apparatus.

TO PLACE TWENTY SHILLINGS IN A WINE-GLASS.

Full to the brim, without spilling one drop.—Take care that the edge of the glass is quite dry: pour the water into the glass gently, until it is quite full; then drop the shillings in one by one very gently, and on their edges. If you act otherwise, the water will run over the edge of the glass.

THE HYDRAULIC DANCER.

Shape out a doll, A B, of light material, and paint or dress him prettily, as your fancy suggests, and between his legs set the cone, C, made of thin sheet-copper.

On placing this aquatic Blondin on a perpendicular jet of water, it will balance itself on the top, while rising and falling divertingly.

A hollow copper ball, an inch in diameter, will balance itself in the like manner, turning continually round its centre, and casting the water from its surface.

XIV.—TRICKS WITH MUSICAL AND OTHER SOUNDS.

HINTS FOR PUBLIC SPEAKERS.

In a large room, nearly square, speak from one corner to the other corner, diagonally. In ordinary rooms, the lowest pitch that will reach across the room is best. In the same, speak along the length. Low ceilings carry sound better than the high.

THE MERIDIAN ALARUM.

There are other ways of utilising the burning-glass to give a signal than to adjust it so that the rays, at noon, shall fire off a cannon, as at the Palais Royal, Paris. For instance, let the action of the focussed light and heat operate on a delicate spring retaining the hammer of a bell, the valve of a chamber of compressed air, with its outlet forming a whistle, &c., &c.

MUSICAL WATER.

A jet of water, passing through a hole in a brass plate fixed at the end of a glass tube will emit a musical sound, in consequence of the intermittent flow of the liquid through the orifice. Again, a slender vein of water, some twelve inches long, on being allowed to fall vertically from a vessel, will break at the lower end of the vein into drops. This vein of water should be brightly illuminated from above by a beam of light sent through it from an electric lamp, so that the thread of water will look like a line of light, from the end where it breaks into drops to the orifice from which it issued. A musical note of constantly-increasing pitch being then set up by means of the wind instrument known as a “syren,” when the note reaches a sufficiently high pitch, the sound will act upon the luminous column of water, which will shorten itself by four or five inches, in response to the one particular sound to which it was sensitive. The same jet of water will respond to the beats produced by two organ-pipes, &c.

THE ÆOLIAN WHISTLE.

The Chinese fasten a whistle to their kites, so that the mouth always faces the wind, and the sound is almost continuous.

SIMPLE ÆOLIAN HARP.

Fasten the ends of a length of waxed saddler’s silk to pegs or nails, which insert in the crack between the two sashes midway in a window, so as to stretch the cord well. The entering air will call out the musical vibrations.

TO PLAY ON TWO WHISTLES AT ONCE

Double a length of gutta percha tubing, say two yards long, and cut a slit in the centre, where you insert one end of another piece of tubing, of the same or a greater length.

In the two end openings put whistles, and make the whole air-tight. Place the free end of the long piece around the nozzle of a bellows, and on forcing the air from which into this novel instrument a double succession of sounds can be produced. The whistles should be pitched differently, and more than two can be used.

ECHOES.

A good ear cannot distinguish one sound from another unless there is an interval of one-ninth of a second between the arrival of the two sounds. Sounds must, therefore, succeed each other at an interval of one-ninth of a second in order to be heard distinctly. Now, the velocity of sound being eleven hundred and twenty feet a second, in one-ninth of a second the sound would travel one hundred and twenty-four feet. Repeated echoes happen when two obstacles are placed opposite to one another, as parallel walls, for example, which reflect the sound successively.

A certain river has a bend in it, avoided by every one, as it was supposed to be haunted. At a certain hour in the evening, for many years, terrible curses were distinctly heard. Suddenly they ceased. Hearing an account of the strange phenomena, Mr. H. Panky determined to ascertain the cause, and carefully examined the river on each side for about a mile above and below the bend. He ascertained that at about the time the sounds ceased an old fisherman, who had lived on the opposite side of the river, full a mile from the spot where the curses where heard, had died. He was told that the fisherman was in the habit of crossing the river to a village, where he found a market for his fish, and where he spent his money for liquor; and that after drinking freely on his way home, while rowing across the river at night, he would swear terribly. This gentleman then persuaded a friend to go down the river to the place where the curses were formerly heard, while he remained in a boat on the river at the point at which the old man usually crossed. He then played on a bugle and sang several songs. His friend soon returned, and with eager delight exclaimed, “O, Hanky, such glorious music fills the air, just where the oaths used to be heard!” The neighbours came rushing down to hear it, and some fell on their knees, praying. They said, “The angels have driven the devil away.” Mr. Panky then asked what were the songs they heard. His friend described them correctly, and said he understood even the words, one of them being the famous Marseillaise, another a German song. The foreign words made the ignorant more sure that the sounds were supernatural. The magician then played on the bugle, and sang again the same songs, while his friend stood by; but his friend said the music was not equal to that he had heard below, where the sounds had really seemed heavenly.

The peculiar configuration of the river-banks had concentrated the sounds, and the distance and the water had softened them.

WHISPERING GALLERIES.

As a rule a smooth-walled room of an elliptical shape will be found most probably gifted in this mysterious way.

THE INTELLIGENT ECHO.

Find a building, with a wall at an angle where an obstacle will send the voice from the one side around to the other instead of reflecting it as an echo. Then have a friend able to imitate voices concealed round the corner, so that, when your victim calls out, “Who are you?” the answer will come, apparently from echo, in the questioner’s own voice, “I, A or B, of course.”

TO SHIVER GLASSES BY SINGING.

It is known that glasses may be broken by the note, powerfully sounded, which is that given when it is struck, or the octave of that note. Thin and convex glasses are best. But, to make sure, nick or scratch the object with a diamond to start the fracture. A trumpet will not succeed while a violin will.

THE WOODEN HARMONICON.

On a firm stand erect a three-inch soft wood board, a yard high and half a yard broad, in which stand twenty deal rods. The longest should be about five feet. The ones representing semi-tones should be painted a different colour from the others, which can be left plain.

Rub the fingers in rosin-dust and set the rods vibrating with friction, and you will have a manageable instrument, sweet and expressive.

THE STONE HARMONICON.

Stones must be found which, when freely suspended, are sonorous when struck, and those giving out the notes and half-notes of the diatonic and chromatic gamut are to be hung in a frame in proper order.

They are played upon with blows of a little hammer.

Hard wood can be also employed, mounted on a frame, and struck at one end, being the “bones” of the African under another phase.

THE LYRE WITH A GOOD MEMORY.

A proverb assures us that a teller of untruths should be skilled in mnemonics.

We exclaim, quite apropos of this remark, that we have a mystic harp which retains for our pleasure the airs which it has heard or played.

Amidst the murmur of incredulity, take the lyre and hang it to a wire luckily pendent from the ceiling.

On the unbeliever placing his ear close to it, the air is heard as of a whole band, at a distance, brilliant in its minuteness.

_Explanation._—In the upper room is a piano, a square or grand being preferable: a wire runs directly from its sounding-board to the room below where the lyre is suspended. For convenience, the wire can be bent or formed of several portions overlapping where the join occurs.

THE TARTINI FIDDLE TRICK.

Granting any two sounds are drawn from two instruments at the same time, there will be heard a third sound, the more perceptible as the listener is near the middle of the distance between them.

If the two sounds are succeeding ones in the order of consonance, as, for instance, the octave and the twelfth, the double octave and the seventeenth major, &c., the sound resulting will be the octave of its principal.

THE DEMON VIOLIN.

Hang a fiddle behind a partition, and, on striking a note on a second instrument on the other side of the wall, the unseen one will sound in unison.

PRACTICAL JOKES IN THE ORCHESTRA.

Andy Andy’s adventure with the trumpet will be remembered. Hardly less amusing experiments are practised in the orchestras of theatres, especially when a play has run its hundred nights and time hangs heavy.

A handful of bluebottle flies inserted within the bass-vial, or the greasing the fiddle-bows to make the instrument play a perpetual _mute_, may be numbered among them. A little lather put into a cornet will be blown out into soap-bubbles when it is played.

THEATRICAL THUNDER.

Suspend a sheet of iron, five feet wide by six or seven feet long, from the centre of one end by a cord. At the lower end, about five feet from the ground, fasten a handle. On seizing this, and shaking the sheet so that it shall wave in horizontal rolls from your hand upwards, the sound of thunder will be heard, and you will say, with Gainsborough, “Our thunder is decidedly the best.”

_Another Way._—Make a square drum-head of wood, a yard long by half as much wide, over which you spread and firmly glue a sheet of parchment, rather thick, wet on being put on, so as to dry very tight. Hang this up, and, on tapping it with your fingers, the reverberation will imitate a thunder-peal closely. Thus, in the theatre, a tap on the big drum often serves for this purpose.

TO IMITATE THE CRASH OF A THUNDERBOLT STRIKING.

It may have happened to you to have been present when a servant’s awkwardness has let a Venetian blind come down by the “run,” when you surely cannot have failed to notice the terrific noise resulting. By a similar fall of slats, of which the sudden contact gives a number of sharp clatters, blended by the rapidity of their succession into one crash, the semblance of a thunderbolt’s fall is given.

A A, stout iron rods, to which is fastened, at the lower ends, a board C; they rise perpendicularly, and are fastened above, being about 10 feet in length. B B are ropes, to which, at E E, are fastened firmly the slats D D (of which but two are represented, but there are as many as will cover the whole space enclosed in the rods, set 6 or 10 inches apart). These slats slide freely up and down the rods. The ropes, when drawn up taut, retain the slats apart, but, on being released, the slats fall, each striking the under one, and all coming down on C with a fearful crash.

THE CRASH BAG.

To excite a laugh, you may pretend to be angered by the stupidity of your assistant, whom, at the end of your recrimination, you thrust out of doors. Suddenly a frightful sound is heard, a clatter of broken glass, and you exclaim in horror, “He has gone clear through the window!” (He shows his face at a door or window at the other side of the room, and laughs.) This illusion of a broken window is made in two ways; one by an enlarged watchman’s rattle, the ratchet-wheel of which is turned rapidly by hand; and by your letting a stout bag, partly filled with old metal and glass, suspended by a rope, fall a few feet, and be abruptly checked in its descent.

TO IMITATE RAIN AND HAIL.

Out of stout pasteboard cut twenty circles, five inches wide, and cut them all from the edge to the centre, as marked.

Bore a hole through them an inch wide. Join them together by glueing the cut side C of circle A to the cut side D of circle B, and so on, till all the circles form but one piece, which, being thus lengthened, has the shape of a screw. Let them dry. Through the hole run a wooden rod to thread them, and set them three or four inches apart; glue them in that position. Cover them along their outer edge, and at one end with parchment-paper, wet, so as to dry tight, like a drum-head. When dry, put in about a pound of fine shot, more or less, according to the size of the instrument, and close the open end with strong paper.

The lead being at one end of this case, horizontally, if you lift it up gently by the end with the shot, they will run slowly to the other end in the road formed between the circles, and their strokes against the paper cover will closely imitate the patter of rain. If the case is tilted up suddenly, the much louder sounds will resemble hail. By alternately depressing and elevating the case, to keep the shot in motion, the effect can be made continuous.

XV.—TRICKS WITH WIND AND AIR.

INFLAMMABLE AIR.

Put a sponge saturated with ether in a bladder. Let some one inflate this apparently empty vessel with common air with a bellows. On applying a lighted match to a nozzle tied in the mouth of the bladder the gas will take fire and burn, and the spectators will be compelled to believe you rendered common air inflammable.

CURIOUS VIVIFICATION.

Take any number of two-inch tubes, ten inches long, and close the bottom except one small hole. Place a piston in each, as in a syringe. In the bottom place a worm spring under a figure of a man or woman, each one different and in a different attitude, and of such a size as to fill up the hollow cylinders.

Set them all in a circular wooden frame, and create a vacuum under each piston by pushing them down, stopping the hole, and drawing them up to any height you please.

On placing the frame in the receiver, and exhausting the air, the force of the spring being greater than the friction of the piston and the weight of the figure, they will rise up gradually in their proper attitudes. On admitting the air into the receiver they will retire.

If the tubes be inflated with air, they will be extended when the pressure of that in the receiver is taken.

* * * * *

What is the difference between this subject and a young widow? The latter is a widdy girl, while the above is a giddy whirl.

FIERY SHOWER.

Bore out a small reservoir in a piece of hard wood, in the shape of a cup or inverted cone, and fill it with quicksilver in the upper aperture of the receiver of an air-pump. On exhausting the air, the atmospherical pressure will force the mercury through the wood so that it will fall in a luminous shower.

THE COIN AND WINE-GLASS PUZZLE.

Place a half-crown in a wine-glass over a sixpence. To remove the latter without touching the glass, blow down into it, when the larger coin will turn and let the other pass up out over the other side.

THE WEATHER PROPHETS.

Suspend a small circular plate by its centre of gravity, by a fine string or piece of catgut, and attach the other end to a hook. As the air is more or less moist, the plate will turn. A bell-glass may cover it to prevent the wind deranging it, but the air must have access to the string.

Make a box, representing with one side a housefront with two doors, and mount on one side of the turning-plate a man with an umbrella, and on the other a lady with a fan. When the man comes out it indicates damp, whilst the appearance of the lady foretels dry weather. Unfortunately, as the atmospherical changes affect it but by degrees, these weather prophets are unreliable.

THE DANCER ON AN INVISIBLE MOUNTAIN.

Mr. Panky’s friends, invited to his country seat, having admired a beautiful little dancer on the summit of a fountain-jet (page 137), he no sooner has led them into the house than he points to a figure, much of the same appearance, which waltzes a few inches above the surface of his glass table. There is no visible cause.

_Explanation._—The figure is made of a cone of silver-foil, the dress of silver-paper, and the head of the seed-vessel of the _antirrhinum_, which is extremely light and properly shaped. The base can be weighted with lead pellets to keep the head uppermost, and the whole dances on a current of air. A funnel of pasteboard, with the small end encircling the hole in the table, will catch the figure so that it must roll down into the proper place for an ascension again.

XVI. ELECTRICAL TRICKS.

THE CONTINUOUS CHIME.

Make a “dry pile” as follows:—Cut out of silver-paper used by fancy boxmakers, leaf zinc and writing-paper discs, of the same size, with a die or punch.

Dry the paper in a gentle heat, and arrange the whole in two well-dried glass tubes, beginning with the zinc, next silver-paper, paper side down, the writing-paper, the silver-paper as before, and so on. Cement in brass caps at one end of the tube, with screws to compress the pile, and fasten a second cap after the column is inserted. This secures the perfect metallic current.

Connect the tops with a wire, from the centre of which hangs a brass ball to a raw-silk thread, to come in contact with a bell on the base of each column when reared upright upon a stand. One column has its positive end opposed to the other’s negative one, which makes the two, when connected above, one continuous column. Groove the stand, and cover all with a glass shade oval or round.

The ball will swing to and fro between the bells, repelled and attracted alternately.

To recover lost power, insulate the columns for a few days.

SIMPLE ELECTROSCOPE.

Drive the eye of a needle into a cork and stop a bottle with it, the point being up. At the balancing-spot of an eagle’s feather glue a little hard socket or cup of glass or metal, and place it on the needle point.

Sealing wax, a vulcanite comb passed rapidly through the hair, or other “excited” electrifier, will cause the feather to whirl round and follow it as iron will the magnet.

THE OBEDIENT BROWNIE.

Hang a penny between the poles of an electro-magnet, and spin it round. On making the connection with the battery, the coin will be stopped short, and will place itself in the equatorial position.

THE FEATHER PENDULUM.

A feather suspended between the positive and negative knobs of an electric battery will fly to and fro as it is attracted and repelled.

THE MAGNETIC FOX-HUNT.

On a table, at the back, rear a grove of trees cut out of pasteboard, and with moss gummed on for foliage. Near each side make two doors, and leave the table-top free on the segment of a circle. The rest of this circle is imaginarily described on the other part of the table. A fox, several huntsmen and dogs, made of iron, are placed in the grove, from which they issue and frantically course round back under cover, as if animated with the most frantic spirit.

The chase is suspended at any point in the course, at will of the magician.

_Explanation._—Under the table is a wheel, moved by clockwork, the outer rim of which corresponds with the imaginary circle above in circumference. A strong magnet is attached to the edge, which attracts the iron toys.

Instead of a hunt, a ship sailing under two Colossi of Rhodes, or into two harbours defended by forts, a duck or swan coming out at the call (the water being represented by looking-glass), a dog rushing out of one house and retiring rapidly, when you say, _à la_ clown, “I’ll tell your mother!” into another—these and many other subjects are easily contrived.

THE SPIRIT DRUM.

Have two electric magnets fastened to the side within a drum. Let the wires run up the cord or strap of suspension of the drum, so as to be in contact, when hung by a hook or silken cord in the ceiling, with the wires of a battery behind a partition or under the floor. One magnet is to imitate the sound of the drumstick making the taps, whilst the other executes the roll or accompaniment.

When the drum is hung upon a figure, the arms of the latter are worked by strings, and the wires from the battery are led up through the figure from the table on which it is placed. (For the construction of such tables, see _The Secret Out_ and _The Magician’s Own Book_.)

XVII.—TRICKS WITH FIRE AND HEAT.

For the most strong, and therefore most suitable of the ancient _elements_ for effect, we begin with tricks executed with real fire, with the caution that they were right who first declared fire and water to be good servants, but very bad masters.

THE FOUNTAIN OF FIRE.

To six ounces of water in an earthenware dish add by degrees one ounce of sulphuric acid (_dangerous_), and then three quarters of an ounce of granulated zinc with three or four large grains of phosphorus. These form a gas, amidst much effervescence, take fire and kindle the entire surface, coruscations and spirts of flame leaping out swiftly and most brilliantly; while a beautiful column of smoke will rise above the blue _flames_.

_Note._—Always cut phosphorus under water, and, if burnt by it, apply hartshorn spirits.

LIGHT ON THE WATER.

Drop a little phosphoric ether on a lump of sugar, and throw it into a glass of water. The flame arising will look very pretty in a dark room. On blowing gently on it phosphoric emanations will form and light the air above the water.

SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION.

1st. In a thick saucer make a paste of chlorate of potass with spirits of wine; on adding some sulphuric acid vapour will arise, and its orange-coloured clouds will burst with a snapping noise into flames.

2nd. _Variation._

THE PILLAR OF FIRE.

Pound together a grain and a half of chlorate of potash and two grains of sulphur, a pinch of which mixture dropped into a phial holding a little sulphuric acid will give rise to a splendid column of flame.

3rd. Powdered antimony dropped into a phial of chlorine gas will take fire spontaneously and make a splendid light.

4th. With a glass rod put a couple of leaves of Dutch metal (copper imitating gold leaf) into a phial of chlorine gas, when they will flare up with a red light.

Gold leaf will make a red light. Two or three grains of phosphorus thus served will also take fire. A strip of cloth or soft paper, soaked in oil of turpentine, will be similarly ignited.

THE MINIATURE MOUNT VESUVIUS.

5th. Having some finely pulverised loaf-sugar and some chlorate of potash, also in powder, the same quantity in weight of each, they are well mixed together and placed in a crockery vessel, which will prevent injury to the table or stand. Having a glass rod for a wand, you have but to dip one end in sulphuric acid, and touch the compound with it, to produce a vivid flame.

6th. In a small retort put an ounce of a strong liquor of potash in water, and one drachm of phosphorus. Dip the mouth of the retort half an inch under water in a saucer. Gradually heat the liquid in the retort with a spirit-lamp until it boils. In a few minutes the retort will be filled with a white cloud, then the gas generated will begin to bubble at the end of the saucer; a minute more, each bubble, as it issues from the boiling fluid, will _spontaneously take fire_ as it comes into the air, forming at the mouth a ring.

7th. Into the jar of chlorine gas pour finely powdered charcoal, when a display of great beauty will be made.

8th. A grain of potassium mixed with the same quantity of sodium is to have a drop of quicksilver added to it, when agitation of the three will cause them to ignite and burn brightly.

9th. Potassium and sulphur, heated together, will show a brilliant light. Or, holding some nitre on a metal plate, flowers of sulphur sprinkled on it will ignite. Be careful not to breathe the fumes of sulphur at any time. Iron filings thrown upon red-hot nitre will burn and explode.

10th. Put some phosphorus in a bottle of water, in the proportion of ten grains of the former in one ounce of the latter, and, boiling it over a lamp, fire will burst forth, each particle of the phosphorus becoming a flaming ball, which will beautifully coruscate.

11th. Make a solution of tartaric acid, which, poured into sugar of lead dissolved in distilled water, will precipitate a white powder. Dry this sediment, and put it into a glass phial. Cover this with clay, and bake it in an oven. Now you can put this phial upon a charcoal fire, which you will increase in power until the glass is red-hot and no smoke leaves the mouth; stopper it up with a dab of clay or a lump of mastic, and take it away from the fire to cool. The contents are now fine powdered lead intermingled with the charcoal of the tartaric acid, which will take fire on contact with the open air. Iron and other metals, when reduced to an impalpable powder, will similarly ignite in the common air.

A FIRE OF TIN.

On tinfoil put some freshly powdered crystals of nitrate of copper; moisten with water; fold up the foil gently, wrap it up in paper, and the tin will soon begin to swell and send out flashes of light while burning away.

THE DIVING LIGHT.

On a good-sized cork or bung place a small lighted taper, and then set it afloat in a pail of water. Invert a large drinking-glass over the light, and push it carefully down into the water. The glass being full of air, prevents the water entering it. The candle will burn under water, and come up again to the surface still alight. The largest drinking-glass holds but half a pint, so that your diving light soon goes out for the want of air. A burning candle consumes as much air as a man, and he requires nearly a gallon of air every minute, so that, according to the size of the glass over the flame, you can calculate how many seconds it will remain alight, a large flame requiring more air than a small one. A quart bell-glass is very useful. A substitute is easily made from a green glass pickle bottle, with the bottom cut off.

TO DECORATE METAL.

A brilliant and varied display of colours can be made on metal by dipping the piece in a solution, heated to 212 degrees Fahrenheit, of hyposulphite of lead in hyposulphite of soda.

FIRE FROM TWO COLD LIQUIDS.

Add three drops of any essential oil, such as that of carraway or turpentine, to a teaspoonful of aquafortis in a saucer, to have a bright flame instantly start up.

A GREAT FLAME.

Put half an ounce of sal ammoniac, one ounce of camphor, and two ounces of water in a narrow-mouthed pipkin. Set fire to the gas arising, and a vast column of flame will be produced.

FIRE BY PERCUSSION.

Take a hollow cylinder, in fact, a syringe or pop-gun, of some bad conductor of heat—wood or thick glass—with this difference, that one end must be perfectly closed; it must have a piston like the syringe, also a bad conductor of heat, and which must be made to move in the cylinder perfectly air-tight. Place a bit of tinder or amadou, steeped in a solution of saltpetre in water and then dried, in the cylinder; then place the piston at the cylinder’s mouth, and with a sudden and powerful thrust condense the air in the cylinder: the tinder will ignite. Phosphorus wrapped in paper, and struck with a hammer on an anvil, will likewise enflame.

THE DANCING FLAME.

Make a very small gas jet, to which fit a minute burner; Sugg’s steatite pinhole burner answers best. Above the burner, at a distance of two inches, fix a seven-inch square piece of wire gauze; ordinary window-blind gauze of thirty-two meshes to the lineal inch acts perfectly. Turn the gas on, and light the flame above the gauze. Keep the room free from draught, and the flame will be steady; but at the least sound the flame is certain to move. It is a slender cone, about four inches high, the upper portion giving a bright yellow light, the base being a non-luminous blue flame. At the least noise the flame roars, sinking down to the surface of the gauze, and becoming almost invisible. It is very active in its responses, and, being rather a noisy flame, it is heard immediately. To the vowel sounds it does not appear to answer discriminately. It is extremely sensitive to A, very slightly to E, more so to I, entirely insensitive to O, but slightly sensitive to U. It dances admirably to a musical box, and is highly sensitive to most sonorous vibrations.

A jet of gas issuing through a circular orifice being lighted, and the pressure of the gas then slowly augmented by means of weights placed on the gasometer until such a pressure is reached that the jet of flame is nearly, but not quite, on the point of flaring. The flame will be about two feet long, and so sensitive to sound that a slight chirrup or a hiss from any part of the theatre will make the flame shorten itself to seven or eight inches.

FIRE FROM WOOD.

Dry rattan, or bamboo, struck together or on steel, will emit sparks, on account of the flint minutely intermingled with its outer coating.

HARMLESS EXPLOSION.

Powder four grains of chlorate of potash in a mortar, and add a little flower of sulphur, pulverized very finely. On rubbing the two powders together, a sharp but harmless detonation will result.

GUNPOWDER IGNITED WITHOUT EXPLOSION.

Expose a towel or cloth to a strong fire till it becomes very hot; carry it into a dark room, and, while it is cooling, throw upon it some grains of gunpowder, which will at first inflame. Leave it to cool a little, till the powder no longer detonates. If you then cover it with fresh powder, the latter, when it acquires the same heat as the cloth, will emit in the dark a faint light or weak flame, which will consume all the sulphur without causing the nitre to detonate.

SALAMANDER PAPER.

Tightly and smoothly wrap a clean piece of writing-paper around a smooth metal cylinder, half a dozen inches in length, and an inch and a half thick, and, though held in the flame of a spirit-lamp, it will not catch fire; and yet, apart from the metal cylinder, it will readily ignite.

FIRE-PROOFING ONESELF.

An old book says, if you anoint your hands with two ounces of bol armenian, one ounce of quicksilver, half an ounce of camphor, and two ounces of brandy (well mixed together), it seems that you may steep them in a pot of boiling lead. If you prepare yourself with liquid storax (a juice produced from a tree called casper bauhine in Italy and elsewhere), you may enter fire—eat fire—have a coal put on your tongue—or, _finally_, swallow boiling oil (!). This storax also enables you to undergo baking in an oven: and as for taking poisons, the author says it is easy enough, if you take an antidote afterwards.

To handle boiling lead, no preparation is required, as the perspiration generated by the heat forms a coating of steam on the skin, impermeable to the metal, which feels like liquid velvet.

In the writer’s youth, before he ever thought of parading his acquirements, he remembers being one of a party of boys around a caldron of molten lead, used to solder gas-pipes in the street, all of us scrambling in the pot for coppers which a practical joker dropped in. The jest was most amusing when a penny had remained some time on the surface of the dross, and was thoughtlessly put into the cold hand to be transferred to the pocket.

Nevertheless it is a feat which had better be witnessed than performed by oneself.

As for dry heat, men have borne it up to 300 deg. Fahrenheit. The writer has been in the inner drying-rooms of an oil-silk factory where the workmen put their tea and coffee to boil, and experienced no ill effects, though a knife could not be touched without a disagreeable sensation.

To put a coal on the tongue, the skin is prepared, and must be thoroughly calloused, which no amateur would for a moment think of doing.

DIFFERENT TEMPERATURE OF WATER IN THE SAME VESSEL.

With a mixture of size and lamp-black paint half the outside of a tin pot. Fill with boiling water, when, by trial with a thermometer, or your finger if you are hardened, the water will be found to cool more quickly on the blackened than on the polished side.

THE MAGIC FLUID.

Mr. Hanky Panky displays to the audience a little fragment of a Tuscan temple, being a slab of marble, at the ends of which stand two black marble columns, two feet high, eight inches apart. Two glass tubes, almost as fine as capillary ones, cross the intervening space, in a direction inclined to the horizon.

A coloured liquid is distinctly seen running upwards through the lower tube from one column to the other, and thence back again by the upper tube. The colour is pleasing to the eye, and the regularity of the flow well illustrates the theory of the circulation of the blood.

It is impossible to believe there are pumps concealed in the pillars and clockwork, while the low price at which such toys can be sold precludes the idea of costly mechanism.

Indeed, the two glass tubes are what is commonly known as a pulse-glass.

The glass tube ends in glass bulbs full of coloured spirits of wine. When one bulb is held in the hand and a slight inclination given to the tube, the animal heat will excite the fluid, and drive it continually from one ball to the other.

As for Mr. Panky’s machine, he had filled the two columns, which were hollow, with hot sand, which produced the same effect as the heat of the hand. The sand will not cool for about half an hour, nowhere near which time need the apparatus be kept before the audience.

There could be, with larger columns, small spirit-lamps or gas introduced. Let a tube in the column fit into an orifice in your table, and ignite the gas thus admitted by a spark of frictional electricity. The heat would be continuous during many hours.

BLUE TO WHITE.

Dissolve a small lump of indigo in sulphuric acid by the aid of moderate heat, and you will obtain an intense blue colour; add a drop of this to half a pint of water, so as to dilute the blue; then pour some of it into strong chloride of lime, and the blue will be bleached with almost magical velocity. This trick is called “The Restoration”—of the Bourbons understood, since their colour, the Royalist white, replaces the Republican blue.

HEAT IN POWER.

Cork a brass tube, holding water, and attached to a whirling table, and if it chafes against a wooden rubber in its motion the frictional heat will make the water boil, and the stopper will be blown out.

GREEN TO BLACK.

Make a cup of strong green tea; dissolve a little green copperas in water, which add to the tea, and its colour will be black.

COLOURS VANISHING AND REAPPEARING.

Dissolve brass filings in volatile alkali, which will be a liquid of a blue colour while exposed to the air, but, on corking a phial of it, the colour will disappear.

To nine parts of water in a glass put one part of nitric acid; a red ribbon dipped in this will have its hue “killed,” but it will come again when washed in a solution of fuller’s earth in water.

RED TO PURPLE, GREEN, AND CRIMSON.

Slice a little red cabbage; pour boiling water upon it, and when cold decant the clear infusion, which divide into three wine-glasses; to one, add a small quantity of solution of alum in water; to the second, a little solution of potash in water; and to the third, a few drops of muriatic acid. The liquor in the first glass will assume a purple colour, the second a bright green, and the third a rich crimson.

ENCHANTED TAPERS.

Mr. Panky has concluded a trick in which a borrowed hat was used, and out of it has produced a number of lanterns. These he ranks on the table, and, taking up a glass rod, has but to touch the little tapers to have them catch fire.

_Explanation._—The lantern frames are telescopic, so that a dozen fold into the space of one. The tapers are prepared by being once lit, blown out, and when cold a grain of phosphorus is put on the wick. One end of the glass rod is red-hot; for a glass stick a foot long may be hot enough at one end to inflame phosphorus, and yet be harmless to finger at the other.

The wicks may be prepared with match composition, and have a glass drop containing sulphuric acid; on breaking this with a pinch the acid will fire the wick, but, unfortunately, the fizz betrays too much.

THE INEXTINGUISHABLE CANDLE.

Fill a wheat-straw with live sulphur; wrap it about with lint or cotton, so as to be a wick, and run wax round it in a mould, so as to form a candle.

When this is blown out, the warm snuff ignites from the sulphur.

THE FROZEN CANDLE.

(_Kunstliches Nordlicht._)

Soak a candle in a mixture of sulphur and charcoal-dust, and you may dip it in water and freeze it, and dip again and again till it is thoroughly iced, and yet it will burn. The wick should be kept dry during the operation.

BLACK MORE LUMINOUS THAN WHITE.

If you heat a black and white encaustic tile, the black part will glow the brighter.

INVISIBLE COMBUSTION.

Pour a very little liquid ether into a half-gallon bottle, and the ether, in evaporating, will, of course, fill the bottle with its vapour. Then make a glass rod very hot, but not red-hot, and dip it for half a minute into the neck of the large bottle, and although no smoke, fire, flame, or mist is to be seen, an invisible combustion of the ether vapour does go on inside the bottle. This is proved by inserting a thermometer in the neck of the bottle, when a high temperature is very soon indicated by the instrument.

DAZZLING LIGHT.

Suspend a bullet of antimony in a jar of chlorine gas, in which, after the lapse of many minutes, it will acquire a red heat, and slowly burn away. Then pour finely-divided metallic antimony into a tall jar containing chlorine; the metal instantly ignites, and falls to the bottom as a fiery shower; yet the nature of the chemical action in both these experiments is the same. Make a piece of thick iron wire white hot, and insert it in a large tube containing vapour of sulphur, made by boiling some brimstone in the bottom of the tube; the white-hot iron will catch fire, and burn away like wax, and with intense brilliancy, in the sulphur vapour. The iron must first be raised to an intensely white heat, or it will not burn under these conditions.

WALKING ON BURNING COALS.

Sir David Brewster assumes that the power of walking upon coals and hot iron unharmed depends partly upon a certain horny hardness of the cuticle, and partly upon the action of some chemical substance with which the cuticle has been smeared. The conjuror Richardson made himself famous in England by chewing burning coals, pouring melted lead upon his tongue, and swallowing melted glass. Sir David Brewster considers these feats to have been in part real, and in part a deception.

THE DIVING LIGHTS.

Have a long glass bottle and a glass tube of the same length. Into the phial put two drachms of chlorate of potass, and upon it nine or ten pieces of phosphorus. Then insert the tube, and pour down it half an ounce, by measure, of strong sulphuric acid. The liquid will turn yellow, and a gas will arise and be inflamed by the phosphorus most effectively. A few lumps of phosphoret of lime will turn the flame emerald-green.

2nd. Drop several pieces of phosphoret of lime into pure water in a tumbler, and flashes of fire will suddenly dart about and end in wreaths of smoke, which will rise to the surface very prettily.

3rd. Three (3) ounces of sulphur of iron, one (1) ounce of saltpetre, and three (3) ounces of gunpowder being beaten up thoroughly together, put the composition in a paper or cardboard mould or cup, and, touching a light to it, and putting it in a vessel of water, it will burn to the last grain, though after sinking to the bottom.

4th. Into a glass vessel of hot water, put a small piece of phosphorus, and instantly direct a stream of oxygen upon it from a bladder with pipe-end cut off. The phosphorus will blaze up brightly under the water.

THE SYMPATHETIC LAMP.

This lamp is put upon a table; the conjurer gives a signal to the assistant to blow in a pipe, without directing the wind to the place where it is laid, and nevertheless it extinguishes it immediately, as if some person had blown it out.

_Explanation._ The stand which holds the lamp contains a pair of bellows in its base, by which the wind is conveyed straight to the flame through a little pipe. An assistant under the floor (or behind the curtain), by moving machinery concealed under the table, works the bellows below to extinguish the lamp at the moment desired.

PROOF THAT FLAME IS HOLLOW.

Pour some spirit of wine into a watch-glass, and inflame it; place a straw across this flame, and it will only be ignited and charred at the outer edge; the middle of the straw will be uninjured, for there is no ignited matter in the centre of the flame. Or if you hold a card over a candle-flame where it will be singed you will find a browning ring and not a solid scorch.

MAGIC LAMP.

Put some granulated zinc in an ordinary wine-bottle, and pour in a mixture of water and sulphuric acid, four parts of the former to one of the acid; through a hole in the cork run a glass tube, and cork the bottle. The decomposition of the water will send up some hydrogen gas, which will drive out the common air, and then the touch of a light to the tip of the tube will inflame the gas as it rises, and produce a faint light, scarcely visible by day. The heat, however, is so intense that it will melt metal and make platinum white hot. You may collect the steam inside a tumbler held over the flames, being caused by the hydrogen forming water by its union with the oxygen of the air.

2nd. In the cork of a jar of oxygen, is a long wire, at the lower end of which is a copper cup, to contain a piece of lighted phosphorus. In an instant a light more extreme than the sight can sustain, is produced and the bottle will seem to be full of light. Pure oxygen would probably cause the jar to be burst by its heat, so its weakening by one-quarter of its bulk by air will be advisable.