The Magician's Own Book, or, the Whole Art of Conjuring / Being a complete hand-book of parlor magic, and containing over one thousand optical, chemical, mechanical, magnetical, and magical experiments, amusing transmutations, astonishing sleights and subtleties, celebrated card deceptions, ingenious tricks with numbers, curious and entertaining puzzles, together with all the most noted tricks of modern performers.

by George Arnold; Frank Cahill

BRILLIANT RED FIRE.

Weigh five ounces of dry nitrate of strontia, one ounce and a half of finely powdered sulphur, five drams of chlorate of potash, and four drams of sulphuret of antimony. Powder the chlorate of potash and the sulphuret of antimony separately in a mortar, and mix them on paper; after which add them to the other ingredients, previously powdered and mixed. No other kind of mixture than rubbing together on paper is required. For use, mix with a portion of the powder a small quantity of spirits of wine, in a tin pan resembling a cheese toaster, light the mixture, and it will shed a rich crimson hue. When the fire burns dim and badly, a very small quantity of finely powdered charcoal or lamp black will revive it.

PURPLE FIRE.

Dissolve chloride of lithium in spirit of wine, and when lighted, it will burn with a purplish flame.

SILVER FIRE.

Place upon a piece of burning charcoal a morsel of the dried crystals of nitrate of silver (not the lunar caustic), and it will immediately throw out the most beautiful sparks that can be imagined, whilst the surface of the charcoal will be coated with silver.

THE FIERY FOUNTAIN.

Put into a glass tumbler fifteen grains of finely granulated zinc, and six grains of phosphorus, cut into very small pieces beneath water. Mix in another glass, gradually, a dram of sulphuric acid, with two drams of water. Remove both glasses into a dark room, and there pour the diluted acid over the zinc and phosphorus in the glass; in a short time beautiful jets of bluish flame will dart from all parts of the surface of the mixture; it will become quite luminous, and beautiful luminous smoke will rise in a column from the glass, thus representing a fountain of fire.

COMBUSTION WITHOUT FLAME.

Light a small green wax taper; in a minute or two, blow out the flame, and the wick will continue red hot for many hours; and if the taper were regularly and carefully uncoiled, and the room kept free from the current of air, the wick would burn on in this manner until the whole was consumed. The same effect is not produced when the color of the wax is red, on which account red wax tapers are safer than green, for the latter, if left imperfectly extinguished, may set fire to any object with which they are in contact.