Page:The American Boy's Handy Book edition 1.djvu/378

Upon opening his eyes late one summer morning the author was very much startled and astonished at an apparition he beheld upon the wall. He saw at one side of the room, in a waving circle of light, a horrible, gaping monster that was about to make a mouthful of a wriggling, big-headed creature, as large as a cat. Upon turning over in bed and facing the window, the cause of this strange phenomenon was seen. The "gaping monster" proved to be a tiny gar, and the wriggler nothing more nor less than a tadpole. The curtains of the window had fallen down upon each side of a glass globe in which some aquarium pets were quarrelling. A ray of the morning sun had found its way into the darkened room through the fish globe, and by some unaccountable means transformed the globe into a sort of magic lantern lens and slide, throwing the magnified reflections of the inmates of the aquarium upon the wall. The gradual change in the position of the sun caused the vision to fade away in a few moments, and the writer has never since been able to arrange the light so as to reproduce the same effect. Fortunately, however, some one else has discovered the principle, and from it evolved a simple magic lantern, which any boy can make for himself; an account of this invention lately appeared in the Scientific American, and the editors of that paper have kindly consented to allow the description to be used for the benefit of the "American Boys."