Hanky Panky

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

3rd. Fasten a point of charcoal on the end of a coil of soft iron wire, which is hung from the cork of the jar of oxygen, and on lighting the charcoal the flame will catch the wire and throw out a brilliant light. The sparks will be formed by the union of the metal and gas forming oxide of iron. They will be very hot, and may even pierce the side of the bottle.

4th. Light some sulphuret of carbon in a dish, and on presenting a brush of steel wire to the flames an illumination will be had.

5th. A small coil of platinum wire put in, or a little oxide of zinc poured on, the flame of a lighted jet of hydrogen gas will furnish a bright light.

6th. Magnesium ignited gives a brilliant flame. The wire is to be fed by clockwork to a light, or simply held by the hands.

7th. A red-hot iron wire dropped into a jar of oxygen gas, tightly covered over, will scintillate and be strongly luminous. The sparks that fall will break the glass, except for the precaution of a layer of fine sand at the bottom. Into the same gas place a firefly, “lightning bug,” or glow-worm, and the light will be uncommonly vivid. So with a lighted candle.

TO BURN THE POKER IN THE CANDLE.

File off an ounce from the fire-end of a poker. The iron filings produced are perfectly combustible, as may be proved by sprinkling them over the flame of a candle. As they descend into the flame they take fire, each particle burning like a star—producing, in fact, miniature fireworks. Any iron filings will burn in the same way; but a poker is the handiest means to prove that while iron, in a solid mass, will not burn, in small atoms it takes fire readily. It is just for the same reason that a fire is better lighted with chips than with a log of wood.

FIRE FOR AMATEUR THEATRICALS.

Put a lump of fresh quicklime in a cup, pour water it, and the heat will be very great. A pailful of quicklime, if dipped in water, and shut closely into a box constructed for the purpose, will give sufficient heat to warm a room, and is the source of steam vapour in theatrical representations.

A LAMP WITHOUT FLAME.

Wind a platinum wire spirally round the wick of a spirit-lamp; light the wick, and let it burn till the wire is red-hot; then remove the wick, but the wire will remain red as long as there is spirit in the lamp; and though there be no flame, it will give out enough light for one to read by, if not too far off.

RAYS OF THE SUN.

The invisible, and not the visible, rays of the sun have the greatest heating power, and do the principal work in the melting of the mountain snows, and in vaporising the waters of the seas and rivers. Water absorbs or filters away the dark rays from the light ones; so that, if you pass the rays from an electric lamp through a narrow glass trough filled with water, and then bring them to an intensely sharp and brilliant focus, although the rays thus filtered contain sufficient heat to set fire to brown paper, hoar-frost is not touched by them, because, being transparent to these rays, it lets them pass through without absorption. Proof:—You can and do set fire to paper in the focus, and then place a flask, covered outside with hoar-frost, in the same focus, yet the snow remains unmelted. Then you can stop all the visible rays by the interposition of a glass trough filled with solution of iodine in bisulphide of carbon—which is, however, transparent to the invisible rays—and on removing the trough of water, this allows invisible rays to pass on to the focus, whilst the visible rays are cut off by the solution of iodine. When the flask coated with hoar-frost is placed in the dark focus, the heat at once melts it from the surface, wherever the glass is brought into the centre of action.

COMMON GAS.

Bituminous coal contains chemical compounds, nearly all of which can, by distillation, be converted into an illuminating gas, and with this gas cities are lighted. Fill with coal dust (or walnut or butternut meats) the bowl of a tobacco-pipe; then cement the top over with some clay, place the bowl in the fire, and soon smoke will issue from the end of the stem. When that has ceased coming, apply a light, and it will burn brilliantly for several minutes; after it has ceased, take the pipe from the fire, and, when cool, remove the clay, and a piece of coke will be found inside. Toy balloons can be filled by this means. They are made of goldbeater’s skin, sheet gutta percha, &c., and are miniatures of the aëronautic machines seen on gala occasions.

THE FAIRY IRIS.

Well mix in two ounces of spirits of wine half a drachm each of nitrate of baryta, nitrate of copper, chloride of copper, and nitrate of strontian. Put this liquid in a strong metal globe, holding a quarter of a pint, by an aperture into which screws tightly a small fountain-jet with a tap. Boil over a spirit-lamp. When the spirit boils, shut off steam for five minutes. On turning the tap the whole of the spirit will blow out and spread like a cloud, to which a light being applied, the whole will become a fiery spray, tinted blue, green, red, yellow, &c.

Perform only in an empty room, where no harm can be done by an explosion.

THE COLD LIQUID BECOMING SOLID UNDER HEAT.

Put equal parts of fixed alkali and of powdered quicklime, and boil them in sufficient water rapidly; filter, and put in a well-stoppered bottle. Again boil this liquor, either in the bottle or another container, until it becomes pasty, or like thick glue. Let it cool, and it will become a transparent liquid again. Repeat at pleasure.

INVISIBLE GASES MAKE A SOLID.

Muriatic acid and ammonia will combine to make a visible solid. Also ammonia and carbonic acid.

GASES MAKE A LIQUID.

Oxygen and hydrogen form water.

CHEMICAL CURIOSITY.

The double salt potassio-chromic oxalate presents the curious anomaly of being pure deep blue when in crystal, claret-red in strong solution, and dusky green if further diluted. The crystals appear black by reflected, but blue by transmitted light. A solution made by dissolving ten grains of potassium bichromate, twenty grains of oxalic acid, and twenty grains of potassium binoxalate in four ounces of hot water, if put into a white glass bottle, appears to be a red solution when seen in the direction of the longer diameter, but a green liquid viewed through the shorter.