This sensational act consists in the artist being rolled in a wheel, measuring six and a half feet in diameter and eighteen inches wide, along a track in the form of a loop. Our first two illustrations give a clearer idea than can be given in words. Mr. Eclair--the artist's name--has had his track made by Mr. A. Klose, Schiffbauerdamm, and practised in the so-called training-wheel for the past fifteen weeks before he undertook his first journey. In this training-wheel he accustomed himself to the revolutions of the wheel. This was all the more necessary, as he found on practising that, in consequence of the rapid revolutions, the small veins and other blood-vessels in the neck and head became swollen--so much so that a journey in the "loop" without previous experience would certainly, in his opinion, have been fatal. [Illustration: PRACTISING IN THE TRAINING-WHEEL. _From a Photo. by Rochlitz._] After the perfect construction of the track had been ascertained by thorough tests--amongst which heavy waggon-wheels were caused to be rolled along the track--Mr. Eclair at length took his first ride. It was a ride for life or death. Nobody could foresee what the result would be. Luck favoured the venturesome artist, and his success was acclaimed with joy and satisfaction by all the interested beholders, so smoothly and faultlessly did the performance end. Such was the birth of a new sensational circus feat! And a second ride which Mr. Eclair soon afterwards took turned out equally successful. The track slopes from a platform about fifteen yards high down into the "loop." It must be understood that this is not a real loop, such as, for example, Mündner uses, but is so constructed that the fearless rider rushes in his wheel down the slope, entering the ring by a trap-door, so that the wheel rolls round it. This heavy wheel, which weighs five hundredweight, flies up the track with a terrific momentum, and, in consequence of its centrifugal force, presses against the track with a force of seventeen times its own weight. When the wheel has passed the highest point of the loop it flies down the other side, and leaves the loop again by another trap-door which has in the meantime been opened. The downward movement, being still very rapid at the point of exit, is then retarded by means of outlet-rails which adjust themselves exactly to the wheel, and the mad ride ends at length in a net.