Messer Giambattista della Porta appears to have used his science and magical art to invent “Some Sports against Women”; which will show what the Borgian Era regarded as permissible practical jokes. He says that, if you wish to discover paint on a face, you must chew saffron before breathing on her, and incontinently she yellows: or you may burn brimstone near her, which will blacken mercury sublimate and cerusa (white lead): or you may chew cummin or garlic and breathe on her, and her cerusa or quicksilver will decay. But if that you yearn to dye a woman green, you must decoct a chameleon in her bath. His tenth book deals with interminable and elaborate processes of distillation and sublimation; proving that what was said on a previous page concerning Letters and Art, (viz., that the habit of the time was to think all of the workmanship, and nothing of the material used,) was perfectly true of Fifteenth Century pharmacy also. These mages sat and boiled their alembics and crucibles; and distilled, and distilled, and sublimed, and sublimed, till the nature of their stuff was lost, or utterly changed, instead of being refined and concentrated as they vainly hoped. They were just like boys, eager, sensible, ardent, inexperienced. They made the inevitable blunders of adventurers. They committed the extravagances of human nature in unwonted circumstances; and the wisdom of the Twentieth Century is the fruit of the fooling of the Fifteenth. Messer Giambattista della Porta devotes his eleventh book to Perfumes; his twelfth to the making of Greek Fire (from camphor, pitch, spirits and brimstone) of gunpowder, and of rockets shells and mines; his thirteenth to the tempering of steel. His fourteenth book contains monstrous and characteristic recipes connected with meats and drinks. If you want to make your guests drunken, mix with their wine the filth of a dog’s ear. If you prefer to make them mad-drunk, give them a camel’s froth in water. If you want to avoid being overcome of wine, eat leeks and saffron, wear garlands of roses, violets and ivy-berries, and carry an amethyst on your person. To keep your boy sober, before he has tasted wine give him the boiled eggs of an owl, to temper his natural heat. If you want delicately to drive unwelcome guests from your table, you may disgust them with the viands in five ways: first, a needle which has sewed dead men’s shrouds when stuck under the table will cause all to loathe to eat: secondly, meat secretly peppered with powdered root of wake-robin (_Arum maculatum_) will fetch the skin off their mouths: thirdly, food sprinkled before serving with powdered leaves of cuckoo-pine (—_gen. Arum_) will produce copious salivation: fourthly, knives and napkins rubbed with wildgourd juice (_Cucunis colocynthus_, κολοκύνθις ἀγρία) will give to all they touch a horrible smack : lastly, harp-strings, cut small and strewed on hot meat, will writhe like worms; and so you may rid your table of unwelcome guests.