THE MAGICIAN’S BIRDCAGE.
(Les Oiseaux Ranimés.)
There is an universal exclamation of sorrow from the ladies when the inmates of the pretty cage—suddenly produced from a gentleman’s hat, as a conclusion to a trick—are found to be lifeless.
Participating in the distress, Monsieur Hanky Panky seeks to remove its cause, and for that purpose borrows from the audience a pocket handkerchief.
Fig. 46.
Hardly has he drawn it two or three times over and around the cage, than the pitying faces are seen beaming with wonderment and joy, for the inanimate birds have been resuscitated, and are flying and chirping within the gilded bars.
Fig. 47.
Explanation.—Some wondrously scientific gentleman will probably descant upon the marvellous effects of training of canaries, or, perhaps, of the administering angels, ether and chloroform. Let him do so, for you will learn on an inspection of the cage, that it has a double bottom, in the receptacle of which, at first, the live birds are kept unseen, and, on the pressure of a spring in the knob at the top, the stuffed ones descend, thanks to the false bottom sinking in the middle, if its halves are on pivots at each side; or, one half sinking one side and the other opposite, if they turn lengthwise.
An egg can be made to transform itself into a live bird or mouse, and other changes can be wrought by this same apparatus.
Fig. 48.—“And when the Pie was opened,” &c.