Through the Water Dry.
Into a basin full of water, throw a coin, or ring, or other suitable object, and announce that you will take it out of the basin without wetting your hand. All that is needed to effect this is to dust the surface of the water with some form of powder having no cohesion with water, and which, consequently, water does not moisten. Powdered lycopodium, to be procured of any chemist, has this property.
Having sprinkled a little of this powder on the surface of the liquid, plunge your hand boldly to the bottom, pick up the ring, and show the company that your hand is as dry as it was before the operation. This comes of the fact that the lycopodium has formed over your hand a regular glove, to which the liquid cannot adhere any more than it can to the plumage of the ducks, which we see plunge and plunge again, and still come up dry as ever, by reason of the oily matter secreted by their feathers.
Those who may care to carry the experiment further may try it with hot water, increasing the temperature at each attempt, when they will find that it is possible, with the aid of the lycopodium, to lift an article out of a kettle of all but boiling water. The sensation of heat is not destroyed, but it causes no injury to the tissues—in other words, no scald.