Endless Amusement / A Collection of Nearly 400 Entertaining Experiments in Various Branches of Science; Including Acoustics, Electricity, Magnetism, Arithmetic, Hydraulics, Mechanics, Chemistry, Hydrostatics, Optics; Wonders of the Air-Pump; All the Popular Tricks and Changes of the Cards, &c., &c. to Which is Added, a Complete System of Pyrotechny; Or, the Art of Making Fire-works.

Take half a pound of pure dry nitrate, in powder; put it into a retort that is quite dry; add an equal quantity of highly rectified oil of vitriol, and, distilling the mixture in a moderate sand heat, it will produce a liquor like a yellowish fume; this, when caught in a dry receiver, is Glauber's Spirits of Nitre ; probably the preparation, under that name, may be obtained of the chemists, which will of course save much time and trouble.
You then put a drachm of distilled oil of cloves, turpentine, or carraways, in a glass vessel; and if you add an equal quantity, or rather more, of the above spirit, though both are in themselves perfectly cold, yet, on mixing them together, a great flame will arise and destroy them both, leaving only a little resinous matter at the bottom.
If you take up a small quantity of melted glass with a tube, (the bowl of a common tobacco-pipe will do,) and let a drop fall into a vessel of water, it will chill and condense with a fine spiral tail, which being broken, the whole substance will burst with a loud explosion, without injury either to the party that holds it, or him that breaks it; but if the thick end be struck, even with a hammer, it will not break.
Take two level pieces of glass, (plate glass is the best,) about three inches long and four wide, exactly of the same size; lay one on the other, and leave a space between them by pasting a piece of card, or two or three small pieces of thick paper, at each corner.
Join these glasses together at the edges by a composition of lime slaked by exposure to the air, and white of an egg. Cover all the edges of these glasses with parchment or bladder, except at one end, which is to be left open to admit the following composition.
Dissolve, by a slow fire, six ounces of hogs'-lard, with half an ounce of white wax; to which you may add an ounce of clear linseed oil.
This must be poured in a liquid state, and before a fire, between the glasses, by the space left in the sides, and which you are then to close up. Wipe the glasses clean, and hold them before the fire, to see that the composition will not run out at any part.