Transcriber’s Notes: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_), and text enclosed by equal signs is in bold (=bold=). Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end, including some corrections to the text. * * * * * [Illustration: HOW TO DO CHEMICAL TRICKS] HOW TO DO CHEMICAL TRICKS. Containing Over One Hundred Highly Amusing and Instructive Tricks With Chemicals. By A. ANDERSON. HANDSOMELY ILLUSTRATED. NEW YORK: FRANK TOUSEY, Publisher, 24 UNION SQUARE. * * * * * Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1898, by FRANK TOUSEY, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D.C. * * * * * HOW TO DO CHEMICAL TRICKS. From the remotest ages chemistry has exercised the strongest fascination on the minds of the curious, nor is it a matter of surprise that boys should feel themselves drawn strongly by its mystery and seeming magic. This attraction is undoubtedly caused by what the ancients called the elements, earth, air, fire and water. There is something so weird about the manifestation of air and fire, that it is not difficult to understand how the alchemists believed them to be forces able to be used at the bidding of spirits, who might be conjured up by incantations and spells. Now it is known that these uncanny beings existed only in the imagination of the forerunners of modern chemists. Yet what boy can look on the brilliantly colored fires of a Fourth of July display, or the burnished gold of the setting sun, or the fantastic pictures in the glowing coals in a grate, and not feel that there is still something of magic and mystery in fire still? What the boy feels, the scientist cannot explain. Nobody knows actually what fire is. All that can be said is that fire is produced by certain substances, such as coals, wood, or paper, that give out heat, while passing from one state to another. Now the word “element” was and is used to mean that simplest form of matter, which, with other simplest forms goes to make up the whole world of everything in it. The earth, animals, plants, the sea, the atmosphere, are all made up of one or more of some seventy substances called elements. Hence it is clear that the earth, air and water are not, as the ancients thought, elements at all. As will be seen in this little book, both air and water consist of mixtures of elements. In chemistry such mixtures are called compounds. This word occurs again and again, so its explanation should be remembered.