Holiday Frolics; Or, Endless Amusement for the Christmas Fireside / Containing, the Most Astonishing Feats of Legerdemain, and Astounding Conjurings; Entertaining Experiments in Various Branches of Science; Tricks With Cards & Dice. Art of Making Fireworks; Together With an Excellent Collection of Puzzles, Conundrums, Riddles, Charades, &c. &c. The Whole Admirably Calculated to Beguile the Leisure Hours of Our Holiday Friends. Embellished With a Copper-plate Engraving

by Anonymous

To make a Stone Float.

To a piece of cork tie a small stone that will just sink it, and putting it into a vessel of water, place it under the receiver; then exhausting the receiver, the bubbles of air will expand from its pores, and adhering to its surface, will render it, together with the stone, lighter than water, and consequently both will rise to the surface and float upon it.

The Fiery Fountain.

If twenty grains of phosphorus, cut very small and mixed with forty grains of powder of zinc, be put into four drams of water, and two drams of concentrated sulphuric acid be added thereto, bubbles of inflamed phosphorated hydrogen gas will quickly cover the whole surface of the fluid in successions forming a real fountain of fire.

To make an Exploding Bubble.

If you take up a small quantity of melted glass with a tube (the bowl of a common tobacco-pipe will do) and let a drop fall into a vessel of water, it will chill and condense with a fine spiral tail, which being broken the whole substance will burst with a loud explosion, without injury either to the party that holds it, or to him who breaks it; but if the thick end be struck, even with a hammer, it will not break.

The Changeable Rose.

Take a common full blown rose, and having thrown a little sulphur, finely pounded, into a chafing dish with coals, expose the rose to the vapour; by this process the rose will become whitish; but if it be afterwards held some time in water, it will resume its former colour.

To Write upon Glass by the rays of the Sun.

Dissolve chalk in aqua-fortis to the consistence of milk, and add to it a solution of silver. Keep this liquor in a glass decanter, well stopped. Then cut out from a paper the letters you would have appear, and paste the paper upon the decanter, which is to be placed in the sun, in such a manner that its rays may pass through the spaces cut out of the paper, and fall on the surface of the liquor. The part of the glass through which the rays pass will turn black, and that under the paper will remain white. You must observe not to move the bottles during the time of the operation.