Upvote:-5
This text you give is a highly exaggerated description of the Mango Tree trick. Here is a contemporary description:
The juggler whom I had seen performing this feat shews you a plain round sea-shore stone, which he places in an earthenware dish filled with earth, and then waters it and covers it with a cloth. After invoking those spirits by whose aid alone such wonders can be wrought, he lifts the cloth, and you see a fresh green plant just peeping out of the earth. He waters it again, again covers the vessel with the cloth, again invokes the spirits, and after a minute or two he lifts the cloth, and you have a pretty tidy small mango tree before you. After another round of the same ceremonies, the tree is discovered to be well stocked with bright coloured mangoes. The whole production of the fruit-tree from the stone occupies about a quarter of an hour.
in Scenes and sights in the East, James Bruce (1856)