This experiment may be completed in the following manner: The operator, approaching his table, which, upon a board suspended behind it, carries a firmly bound pigeon, quickly seizes the poor bird in passing, and conceals it under the pile of paper, while he puts the latter back into the hat in order to see, says he, whether all that has been taken out can be made to enter anew.
Having thus introduced the pigeon or any other object into the hat, the paper is taken out, and it is at the moment that the hat is restored to its owner that he pretends to discover that it still contains something.
A CAKE BAKED IN A HAT.
FIGS. 1-3—A CAKE BAKED IN A HAT.
This old trick always amuses the spectators. Some eggs are broken into a porcelain vessel, some flour is added thereto, and there is even incorporated with the paste the eggshells and a few drops of wax or stearine from a near-by candle. The whole having been put into a hat ([Fig. 1]), the latter is passed three times over a flame, and an excellent cake, baked to a turn, is taken out of this new set of cooking utensils. As for the owner of the hat, who has passed through a state of great apprehension, he finds with evident satisfaction (at least in most cases) that his head gear has preserved no traces of the mixture that was poured into it.
[Fig. 2] shows the apparatus employed by prestidigitateurs to bake a cake in a hat. A is an earthen or porcelain vessel (it may also be of metal) into which enters a metallic cylinder, B, which is provided with a flange at one of its extremities and is divided by a horizontal partition into two unequal compartments, c and d. The interior of the part d is painted white so as to imitate porcelain. Finally, when the cylinder, B, is wholly inserted in the vessel, A, in which it is held by four springs, r, r, r, r, fixed to the sides, there is nothing to denote at a short distance that the vessel, A, is not empty, just as it was presented at the beginning of the experiment.