Procure a paste-board tube about seven or eight inches long and an inch or so in diameter, or roll up a strip of any kind of stiff paper so as to form a tube. Holding this tube in the left hand, look through it with the left eye, the right eye also being kept open. Then bring the right hand into the position shown in the engraving, Fig. 33, the edge opposite the thumb being about in line with the right-hand side of the tube. Or the right hand may rest against the right-hand side of the tube, near the end farthest from the eye. This cuts off entirely the view of the object by the right eye, yet strange to say the object will still remain apparently visible to both eyes through a hole in the hand, as shown by the dotted lines in the engraving! In other words, it will appear to us as if there was actually a hole through the hand, the object being seen through that hole. The result is startlingly realistic, and forms one of the simplest and most interesting experiments known.
This singular optical illusion is evidently due to the sympathy which exists between the two eyes, from our habit of blending the images formed in both eyes so as to give a single image.
LOOKING THROUGH A SOLID BRICK
very common exhibition by street showmen, and one which never fails to excite surprise and draw a crowd, is the apparatus by which a person is apparently enabled to look through a brick. Mounted on a simple-looking stand are a couple of tubes which look like a telescope cut in two in the middle. Looking through what most people take for a telescope, we are not surprised when we see clearly the people, buildings, trees, etc., beyond it, but this natural expectation is turned into the most startled surprise when it is found that the view of these objects is not cut off by placing a common brick between the two parts of the telescope and directly in the apparent line of vision, as shown in the accompanying illustration, Fig. 34.
Fig. 34.
In truth, however, the observer looks round the brick instead of through it, and this he is enabled to do by means of four mirrors ingeniously arranged as shown in the engraving. As the mirrors and the lower connecting tube are concealed, and the upright tubes supporting the pretended telescope, though hollow, appear to be solid, it is not very easy for those who are not in the secret to discover the trick.