In  the  first  place  he  essayed  to  show  the  famous  experiment
of  the  Magdeburg  hemispheres — how  that,  when  the  two
hemispheres  were  placed  together  and  the  air  exhausted  from
the  interior,  they  could  not  be  drawn  apart. It  was  rather
painful  to  sit  and  see  him  making  his  preparations,  in  which
he  neglected  the  precautions  so  obvious  to  anyone  who  has
ever  tried  the  experiment. When  he  had  finished  he  declared
that  the  two  strongest  men  in  the  room  could  not  pull  the
hemispheres  apart. Unfortunately,  they  fell  asunder  as  he
was  handing  them  over  to  the  gentlemen  who  were  to  endeavour

58


Social  Life  in  Dublin

to  perform  the  feat  of  strength. But  he  smiled  on  cheerfully,
and  then  tried  to  explode  some  mixed  gases. He  had  filled
a  bladder  beforehand  with  oxygen  and  hydrogen. As  everyone
knows,  these  gases  will  rapidly  exude  from  a  bladder. With-
out having  told  us  to  take  the  precaution  of  stopping  our
ears,  the  lecturer  lit  a  match,  which  he  attached  to  the  end
of  a  long  stick,  so  that  he  might  apply  a  light  to  the  bladder
from  a  safe  distance. The  only  result  was  that  the  bladder
ignobly  collapsed !  At  last  he  showed  something  which  did
succeed. He  had  a  dish  of  soapsuds,  into  which  he  pumped  a
mixture  of  oxygen  and  hydrogen. This  produced  a  quantity
of  bubbles  which  certainly  did  explode  when  he  applied  a
light. So  pleased  was  he  that  he  then  and  there  repeated  the
operation  half  a  dozen  times. He  next  proceeded  to  show  the
weU-known  experiment  in  which  the  air  is  exhausted  from  a
cylinder  by  means  of  an  air  pump. If  one  end  of  the  cylinder
is  closed  with  a  piece  of  bladder,  the  atmospheric  pressure
should  burst  the  diaphragm. Not  being  properly  dried,  the
bladder  merely  sagged  down  instead  of  bursting !  He  then
proceeded  to  scratch  it  slightly  with  his  knife  to  facilitate  the
bursting ;  but  no,  even  this  did  not  produce  any  effect !  The
audience  were  by  this  time  in  convulsions  of  laughter  at  the
performance,  and  had  become  somewhat  disorderly. A  few
of  them  had  even  crept  up  on  the  platform. While  Mr. Banter
was  labouring  at  the  pump  in  the  hope  of  producing  the  desired
result,  a  lively  youth  got  behind  him  with  a  walking-stick  and
pushed  it  through  the  top  of  the  bladder. 