than common gunpowder; the "Ticker" containing thus a powder which
equals in force two hundred pounds of the common gunpowder. At one end
of the machine is fastened an invisible clock-work meant to regulate the
time of the explosion, which time may be fixed from one minute to
thirty-six hours. The spark is produced by means of a steel needle which
gives a spark at the touch-hole, and communicates thereby the fire to
the whole machine.

The "Eight Day Machine" is considered the most powerful, but at the same
time the most complicated, of all those invented. One must be familiar
with handling it before a full success can be secured. It is owing to
this difficulty that the terrible fate intended for London Bridge and
its neighborhood was turned aside by the instantaneous killing instead
of the two Fenian criminals. The size and appearance of that machine
changes, Proteus-like, according to the necessity of smuggling it in, in
one or another way, unperceived by the victims. It may be concealed in
bread, in a basket of oranges, in a liquid, and so on. The Commission of
Experts is said to have declared that its explosive power is such as to
reduce to atoms instantly the largest edifice in the world.

The "Little Exterminator" is an innocent-looking plain utensil having
the shape of a modest jug. It contains neither dynamite nor powder, but
secretes, nevertheless, a deadly gas, and has a hardly perceptible
clock-work attached to its edge, the needle of which points to the time
when that gas will effect its escape. In a shut-up room this new "vril"
of lethal kind will _smother to death, nearly instantaneously_, every
living being within a distance of a hundred feet radius of the murderous
jug. With these three "latest novelties" in the high season of Christian
civilization, the catalog of the dynamiters is closed; all the rest
belongs to the old "fashion" of the past years. It consists of hats,