The usual modes of preparing these fires are as follows: -

Into a flat porcelain or tin cup pour alcohol, and add the coloring substance previously dissolved in hot water: Or cotton wadding is dusted with the preparation in a fine powder, then soaked in alcohol and lighted. The same ball of cotton may serve repeatedly by merely moistening it with alcohol: or take a common cylindrical tin box about 4 inches high and as many wide, and form it into a rude lamp after the manner of a spirit lamp by passing an inch of perforated tin or brass tube for the wick through the lid, then fill it with alcohol, to which a solution of the coloring substance has been added. The latter arrangement will be found preferable.

The following substances are used to pro-dace the various colors.

Red. - Nitrate of strontia, chloride of strontium.

Yellow. - Chloride of sodium, nitrate of soda.

Green. - Nitrate and iodide of copper, boracic acid.

Green with Blue Streaks. - Chloride of copper.

Pink. - Saltpetre, pearlash, orange, chloride of calcium.