Morning journal and courier., 1886-06-22
WONDERS IN FIREWORKS.
Amazing Th:rty.Seven Dollar Bomb From Japan and Gorgeous YaHke CoIOred Fire.

Amazing Th:rty.Seven Dollar Bombs
 From Japan and Gorgeous Yankee
 Colored Fire.
 From the New York Sum-
 Fireworks this year," said leading py- rotechnist, ''are just shade above the low est price they commanded last year, and last year they were exceptionally cheap. The small boys Fourth of July racket this year, if conducted on a cracker basis, will cost him ten cents more on each forty packs than last years jubilation did In other words he will have to pay one dollar and twenty-five cents a box instead of one dollar and fifteen cents. pack of twenty crackers, each as big as your middle fnger-which is pretty large one I observe-will cost him twenty five cents. Then it will be time for the small boys patriotic father to get in and buy the crackers ten inches long, worth thirty cents each; and those fifteen inches long, with voices like field pieces, that cost seven ty-fve cents each. The torpedoes will range in price from twenty five cents for a box con taining ten of the famous eat torpedoes- specially invented for demoralizing feline serenaders-down to as low as sixty cents for ten packs of the very little ones that don't make much more noise than percussion caps. There are no more of the (so-called) Union torpedoes. They were entirely too dangerous for popular use. The eat torpe- does make just as much noise and are not dangerous-but the cats don't think so. It would do your heart good to see a rowling cat get up and fly over twenty foot fence when one goes off near her."
 "Are there any novelties in pyrotechny?'
 "Yes, more than ever in any one year be- fore, in new fires, new applications of fires and new combinations. There is new steel fire used in candles that gives beautiful eff feet of dazzlingly brilliant scintillating spangles, and golden fire used in the gold en shower candles that is still more splendid in it's effect. Each ball fired out of the can dle throws off golden spur fire in shower until it burns all away at the top of it's flight Rockets are made larger than ever before, going as high as six and eight pounds. Heretofore six-pounders were rarely used even in grand exhibitions. But it is not in size alone that this years rockets excel so much as in ingenuity. Parachute rockets, letting loose one parachute-supported ball of color-changing fire from each, at the apex of it's flight, have been known before. But this year we have rockets that will fire out as many as seven parachutes from each, carry ing changing colored lights floating high ln the air. We call them 'Pleiades' rockets. The parachutes, made of muslin, wire and string, are ingenious1y folded into the head of the rocket, each with it's ball of fire ma terial packed below. At exactly the highest point of it's flight the rocket head bursts, the folded parachutes are fired out, the balls are set blazing and as the air catches each para chute it expands, carrying the ignited balls away like star. It has taken some very nice calculation of forces to make that all come out just right.
 s'Then another rocket that will probably amaze people even more is the cometic kind, the parachute from which carries a revolving