The Magic Bottle.
This trick, if well managed, is one of the most wonderful that can be performed in a drawing-room without apparatus; but it requires dexterity at the conclusion.
The person performing the trick offers to pour from a common wine-bottle, port-wine, sherry, milk, and champagne, in succession, and in any order.
To accomplish the trick, you must make solutions of the following chemicals, and label the bottles with numbers, thus:
No. 1. A mixture of two parts perchloride of iron, and one part sulphuric acid (vitriol).
No. 2. A strong solution of the sulphocyanate of potash.
No. 3. A strong solution of acetate of lead.
No. 4. A solution of bicarbonate of soda, or potash.
No. 5. A clear solution of gum arabic.
Procure a champagne-bottle, and wash it out well; then pour three teaspoonfuls of No. 1 into it. As the quantity is very small, it will not be observed, especially if you are quick in your movements. Pour some distilled or rain water into a common water-bottle, or jug, and add a tablespoonful of No. 5 to it; then set it aside, ready for use.
Provide some wine-glasses, of four different patterns, and into one pattern put one drop of solution No. 2; into another, three drops of solution No. 2; rinse the third with solution No. 3, and the fourth with solution No. 4.
Arrange the glasses on a small tray, remembering the solutions that were poured into each pattern.
Everything being ready, take the champagne bottle that you have prepared, from two or three others, and holding it up, to show the company that it is clear and empty; you must desire some person to hand you the water-bottle or jug, and then fill up the bottle with the water.
Pour some of the contents of the bottle into an unprepared glass, in order to show that it is water; then say: “Change to champagne,” and pour the liquid from the bottle into one of the glasses rinsed with No. 4; then pour into the glass containing three drops of No. 2, and it will change to port wine; but if poured into the glass rinsed with No. [3], it will change to milk; and if into the glass with one drop of No. 2, it will produce sherry.
Be careful in pouring the fluid from the bottle, not to hold it high above the glasses, but to keep the mouth of it close to the edges, otherwise persons will observe that it undergoes change of color after it is poured into them; and, on this account, the glasses should be held rather high.
As all the solutions used in the above trick are deleterious, they should not be left about in the way of children, and, of course, the fluid in the wine-glasses must not even be tasted; but if any of the company wish to drink the wines you have made, then the tray must be adroitly exchanged for another with the proper wines placed on it.