Robert-Houdin devotes the greater part of chapter X., American edition of his autobiography, to belittling Bosco, a conjurer whose popularity all over Europe was long-lived. First, he pictures Bosco as a most cruel creature who literally tortured to death the birds used in his performances. Here, as in his attack on Pinetti, Robert-Houdin throws the responsibility for criticism on the shoulders of another. His old friend Antonio accompanies him to watch Bosco's performance, and it is Antonio throughout the narrative who inveighs against Bosco's cruelty and Antonio who insists upon leaving before the performance closes, because the cruelty of the conjurer nauseates him. At that time no society for the protection of animals existed, and, even if it had, I doubt whether Bosco's performance would have come under the ban. Certain magicians of to-day employ many of Bosco's tricks in which birds and even small animals are used, but the conjuring is so deftly done that the public of 1907, like that of 1838, thinks it is all sleight-of-hand work and that the birds are neither hurt nor killed. Even in Bosco's time the bird trick was not in his répertoire exclusively. All English magicians employed it. Apparently the head of the fowl was amputated, but often in reality it was tucked under the wing, and the head and neck of another fowl was shown by sleight-of-hand. Quite probably the Parisian public did not consider Bosco cruel. Robert-Houdin and his friend Antonio, being versed in sleight-of-hand and conjuring methods, read cruelty between the deft movements. Certain it is that the name of Bosco has not been handed down to posterity by other writers as a synonym of cruelty. The animus of Robert-Houdin's attack on Bosco is evident at every point of the narrative. Now he accuses him of bad taste in appearing in the box-office. Again he suggests that the somewhat impressive opening of Bosco's act savors of both charlatanism and burlesque, when in reality the secret of showmanship consists not of what you really do, but what the mystery-loving public thinks you do. Bosco undoubtedly secured precisely the effect he desired, because Robert-Houdin devotes more than a page to a most unnecessary attempt to explain away what he considered Bosco's undeserved popularity.