PSYCHOLOGY OF PRESTIDIGITATION. 571 



Two artists, Messrs. Ariioiild and liayiialy, (consented to execute 

 before the api)aratns tlieir very best tricks with cards and with juggiiug 

 balls. We thus photographed " le saut de coupe d'une main, et de deux 

 inaius," "le lilage," "le rayonnement," "la carte a I'cpil," and also the 

 vanishing cage, nutmeg, egg, etc. Each of these tricks, which occu- 

 pies about a second, often less, was detailed by a dozen photographs. 

 The egg trick, which takes exactly a second and a half, can be studied 

 in a series of fifteen photographs, each of which is as complete in every 

 detail as if the artist had sat for it alone. 



On examining this photographic collection we are surprised at not 

 finding the illusion so forcible as when the trick is executed before 

 our eyes; in looking over, for example, the numerous pictures which 

 indicate the position of the hands in "un saut de coup," we seize the 

 mechanism of this complicated operation, but we can not understand 

 how the illusion was produced. This series of photographs revealed 

 to Mr. Eaynaly, who had executed the trick, a detail which he had not 

 perceived before. During " le saut de coupe," which he performs in 

 about fifteen hundredths of a second, he places one of his hands in front 

 of the cards to screen them from view; but the whole trick is executed 

 with such rapidity that the spectator does not perceive this action, 

 and, what is still more curious, the artist himself was not aware of it. 

 The photographs of the artist juggling an Qgg has also curious results; 

 one can follow attentively the successive attitudes of his hands in pre- 

 tending to pass the egg from the right to the left. We have not for 

 one moment the impression that the exchange has actually been made. 

 We are even surprised to see that the pretended movement resembles 

 the real movement only at a distance. Not in one of the pictures has the 

 hand the natural movement it should have in laying hold of an object; 

 the trick is done so rapidly that a gross imitation is sufficient to give 

 the illusion. If the photographic proof destroys so completely the 

 illusion, it is because it does away with all the adjuncts necessary for the 

 illusion which we have enumerated : The rapidity of tlie trick, the little 

 discourse given by the artist, the maneuvers which cause a diversion 

 or a diminution of attention, etc. Thanks to photography, we can 

 make a division between these elements of all perception which are so 

 often confounded the one with the other : Brute sensation and the inter- 

 pretation of the mind. 



