The growth of this monstrous, noxious bubble hatched out a multitude of young cockatrices. Not only was the stock of the India Company, the Bank of England, and other sound concerns, much increased in price by sympathy with this fury of speculation, but a great number of utterly ridiculous schemes and barefaced swindles were advertised and successfully imposed on the public. Any piece of paper purporting to be stock could be sold for money. Not the least thought of investigating the solvency of advertisers seems to have occurred to anybody. Nor was any rank free from the poison. Almost a hundred projects were before the public at once, some of them incredibly brazen humbugs. There were schemes for a wheel for perpetual motion--capital, $5,000,000; for trading in hair (for wigs), in those days "a big thing;" for furnishing funerals to any part of Britain; for "improving the art of making soap;" for importing walnut-trees from Virginia--capital, $10,000,000; for insuring against losses by servants--capital, $15,000,000; for making quicksilver malleable; "Puckle's Machine Company," for discharging cannon-balls and bullets, both round and square, and so on. One colossal genius in humbugging actually advertised in these words: "A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is." The capital he called for was $2,500,000, in shares of $500 each; deposit on subscribing, $10 per share. Each subscriber was promised $500 per share per annum, and full particulars were to be given in a month, when the rest of the subscription was to be paid. This great financier, having put forth his prospectus, opened his office in Cornhill next morning at nine o'clock. Crowds pressed upon him. At three P. M., John Bull had paid this immense humbug $10,000, being deposits on a thousand shares subscribed for. That night, the financier--a shrewd man!--modestly retired to an unknown place upon the Continent, and was never heard of again. Another humbug almost as preposterous, was that of the "Globe Permits." These were square pieces of playing-cards with a seal on them, having the picture of the Globe Tavern, and with the words, "Sailcloth Permits." What they "permitted" was a subscription at some future period to a sailcloth-factory, projected by a certain capitalist. These "permits" sold at one time for $300 each. But the more sensible members of Government soon exerted their influence against these lesser and more palpable humbugs. Some accounts say that the South Sea Company itself grew jealous, for it was reckoned that these "side-shows" called for a total amount of $1,500,000,000, and itself took legal means against them. At any rate, an "order in council" was published, peremptorily dismissing and dissolving them all.