Draw any thing you may fancy on a thin white pasteboard; then prick it; afterwards put the same on an horizontal surface, which we will suppose to be another pasteboard; put a lighted candle behind that drawing, and draw on the horizontal surface the lines given by the light; this will give a deformed design. This being done, take away the drawing that was pricked, and the candle; then place your eye where the light was, and you will see your drawing assume a regular form.
CHEMICAL CHANGES.
To change the Colour of a Rose.
Burn some sulphur under the rose, by holding underneath it a lighted bundle of matches. This will fade the red colour, and make the flower turn white or blanched. Its primitive colour will return in about a couple of hours.
To turn Water into Wine.
Take four glasses; rub one in the inside with a piece of moist alum: let the second have a drop of vinegar in it; the third empty. Let the fourth be filled with clean water; in your mouth put a clean rag, with ground basil tied close in it, the bulk not to be bigger than a small nut, which must lie between your hind teeth and your cheek; then take some of the water that is in the glass into your mouth, and return it into the glass that hath the drop of vinegar in it, which will cause it to turn the perfect colour of sack wine; then turn it in your mouth again, and chew the rag of basil between your teeth, and squirt the liquor into the glass, and it will have the perfect colour of claret; returning the basil into its former place, take the liquor into your mouth again, and presently squirt it into the glass you rubbed with alum, and it will have the perfect colour of mulberry wine.
Arbor Dianæ; or, the Silver Tree.
This name has been given to a beautiful and curious precipitation of silver, by means of mercury in an arborescent form. The experiment is made by putting a soft amalgam of silver into six parts of a solution of nitrate of silver, and four of a solution of nitrate of mercury, or—
Amalgamate in a glass mortar one quarter of an ounce of pure mercury and half an ounce of fine silver. Insert in this amalgamation four ounces of pure nitric acid for the solution, and increase the whole by a pint of distilled water; mix it well, and keep it in a glass decanter well stopped. By introducing into this liquid a lump of soft amalgam of silver, the formation of the tree speedily takes place.