TRICK WITH AN EGG AND HANDKERCHIEF.
The prestidigitateur, having afterward secretly seized with his right hand a hollow egg of metal, containing an oval aperture (F, [Fig. 2]), stuffed into it the handkerchief that he seemed simply to roll and compress between his hands. It is almost useless to add that the metallic egg may be easily concealed either with the palm of the hand that holds it, or with the handkerchief.
THE CONE OF FLOWERS.
In prestidigitation flowers have in all times played an important part, and they are usually employed in preference to other objects, since they give the experiments a pleasing aspect. But, in most cases, natural flowers, especially when it is necessary to conceal their presence, are replaced by paper or feather ones, the bulk of which is more easily reduced. Such is the case in the experiment which we are about to present, and which, it must be confessed, requires to be seen from some little distance in order that the spectators may, without too great an effort of the imagination, be led into the delusion that they are looking at genuine flowers. However, even seen close by, the trick surprises one to the same degree as all those that consist in causing the appearance of more or less bulky objects where nothing was perceived a few moments previous.
The prestidigitateur takes a newspaper and forms it into a cone before one’s eyes. It is impossible to suppose the existence here of a double bottom, and yet the cone, gently shaken, becomes filled with flowers that have come from no one knows where. The number of them even becomes so great that they soon more than fill the cone and drop on and cover the floor.
