A Parlor Zoetrope.
We have here the game of the “little horses,” so popular at Continental watering-places, brought in a simplified and innocent form within reach of everybody. Glue round the inside of the rim of a circular dish of white porcelain, a number of little cardboard figures of animals; or simply sketch thereon, with ink, similar figures or numerals, equidistant from one another. Place the dish thus furnished, in an ordinary dish of somewhat larger size, and having its centre slightly elevated—a not uncommon pattern. You will only have to give a slight impulse with the hand to the smaller plate to set it spinning within the other. Should the larger dish not be raised in the centre, you have only to pour into it a little water, enough to make the inner dish just float, and it will then revolve with great freedom, the water practically destroying all friction.
You can repeat the same figure, but with, say, the arms in different positions, so that, when the plate is set spinning, you may have depicted, in due order, the successive positions of a man raising and lowering his arms. Thus, for example, if the first figure has his arms hanging down close by his sides, the next will have them a little further from the body; the third will have them extended horizontally; the next following a little higher; and, finally, the last will have them raised above his head. Now peep, with one eye only, through a little hole made with a pin in a visiting-card or playing-card, and gaze at any given point of the circle described by the figures. When the dish is set in motion, you apparently see one figure only, but such figure seems to move like a living being, its arms appearing to take in succession the various positions which are really those of the separate figures. You may amuse yourself by thus arranging several series of such figures, their positions varied in proper succession, thus reproducing, at merely nominal expense, the scientific toy known as the Zoetrope or Praxinoscope.