A Magic Lantern Trick.
The light of the magic lantern, and the color of images, may not only be painted on a cloth, but also reflected by a cloud of smoke. Provide a box of wood or pasteboard, about four feet high, and seven or eight inches square at bottom, but diminishing as it ascends, so that its aperture at top be but six inches long, and half an inch wide. At the bottom of this box there must be a door that shuts quite close, by which you are to place in the box a chafing-dish with hot coals, on which is to be thrown incense, whose smoke goes out in a cloud at the top of the box: on this cloud, you are to throw the light that comes out of the lantern, and which you bring into a smaller compass by drawing out the movable tube. In this representation, the motion of the smoke does not at all change the figures; which appear so conspicuous that the spectator thinks he can grasp them with his hand. In the experiment, some of the rays passing through the smoke, the representation will be much less vivid than on the cloth; and if care be not taken to reduce the light to its smallest focus, it will be still more imperfect.