A world of wonders, with anecdotes and opinions concerning popular superstitions

Preface

It is surprising, considering the gigantic strides effected by modern science, how many of the eiTors and prejudices engendered by the ignorance of the dark ages remain current in the world in its present days of enlightenment. Like the winged seeds of certain weeds, theii' light and impalpable nature renders them only the more difficult of extirpation.

A cursory review and refutation of these popular prejudices and vulgar errors has been attempted in the following Manual. A more scientific analysis of so spreading a field would have expanded into a Cyclopaedia. But the ancient traditions and modern instances collected in its pages may afford the reader amusement and instruction for the passing hour, as well as an incentive to more profound investigations in hours to come.

LONDON, NOVEMBER, 1845.

Chapter I. Pags

LONGEVITY OF ANIMALS . . . 1 IQ

CHAPTER n.

INCOMBUSTIBLE MEN .... H 22

CHAPTER HI.

VENTRILOQUISTS .... 23 31

CHAPTER IV.

POPE JOAN AND THE WANDERING JEW . 32 36

CHAPTER V.

THE FABLES OF HISTORY . . . 37 45

CHAPTER VI.

MELONS AND MONSTERS . . . 46—53

CHAPTER VII.

Vlll CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VIII.

PACK

VERBAL DELICACY .... 61 64

CHAPTER IX.

AEROLITES AND MIRACULOUS SHOWERS . 65 74

CHAPTER X.

NOSTRUMS AND SPECIFICS . , . 75 82

CHAPTER XI.

rfitSIOGNOMISTS .... 83 95

CHAPTER XII.

LAST WORDS OF DYING PERSONS . . 96 98

CHAPTER XIII.

THE ANTIPODES MORNING AND EVENING DEW . 99 102

CHAPTER XIV.

PERPETUAL LAMPS AND ARCHIMEDES . . 103 109

CHAPTER XV.

THE LYNX AND THE CAMELEON . . 110 — 115

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

CONTENTS. ix

CHAPTER XVIII.

PAGE FORTUNE-TELLERS AND CHIROMANCY . . 124 130

CHAPTER XIX.

ALBERTUS MAGNUS AND NOSTRADAMUS . . 131 137

CHAPTER XX.

LEECHES, SERPENTS, AND THE SONG OF THE

CHAPTER XXI.

CHAPTER XXII.

FASCINATION; OR, THE ART OF PLEASING . 161 170

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE philosopher's STONE . . . 171 177

CHAPTER XXIV.

GIANTS AND DWARFS .... 178 183

CHAPTER XXV.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE MOON AND -LUNAR INFLUENCE . . 191 — 193

CHAPTER XXVII.

APPARITIONS ..... 194 201

X C0>5TENTS.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

PAGE

NOBILITY AND TRADE . . . 202 — 208

CHAPTER XXIX.

MERIT AND POPULARITY . . . 209 219

CHAPTER XXX.

COMETS ...... 220—223

CHAPTER XXXI.

POPULAR ERRORS » . • . 224 — 232

CHAPTER XXXII.

DREAMS . . • . . 233—237

CHAPTER XXXIII.

PREJUDICES ATTACHED TO CERTAIN ANIMALS . 238 243

CHAPTER XXXIV.

CONTENT AND COURTESY . . • 244 248

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE DIVINING ROD .... 249 254

CHAPTER XXXVI.

BEES AND ANTS .... 255 260

CHAPTER XXXVII.

PRKPOSSESSIONS AND ANTIPATHIES . . 261 265

CONTENTS. xi CHAPTER XXXVIII.

PACK

THE INFLUEXCE OF BELLS UPOX THUNDER STORMS 266—269

CHAPTER XXXIX.

SMALL POX AXD VACCINATION . . 270 273

CHAPTER XL.

PRECOCIOUS AXD CLEVER CHILDREN . . 274 — 279

CHAPTER XLI.

EDUCATION OF CHILDREN . , . 280 282

CHAPTER XLII.

PREJUDICES OF THE FRENCH . . . 283 288

CHAPTER XLIII.

MONSTROUS BIRTHS .... 289 293

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE ICHNEUMON AND THE HALCYON . . 294 295

, CHAPTER XLV.

SORCERERS AND MAGICIANS . . . 296 300

CHAPTER XLVI.

MALE AND FEMALE • . . . 301 307

CHAPTER XLVII.

MINOR SUPERSTITIONS .... 308 309

XU CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

PAGE

SOMNAMBULISM .... 310 314

CHAPTER XLIX.

A FEW MORE WORDS ABOUT GHOSTS AND VAM- PIRES, AND LOUP-GAROUX . 315 — 344

CHAPTER L.

APOCRYPHAL ANIMALS .... 345 — 352

CHAPTER LI.

PROFESSIONS ESTEEMED INFAMOUS . 353 356

CHAPTER LIT.

SUPERNATURAL HUMAN BEINGS . . . 357 361

WOKLD OF WONDERS.

CHAPTER I.

LONGEVITY OF ANIMALS.

Most scholars are familiar with the quotation " cervi dicuntur diutissime vivere," which has rendered proverbial the longevity of the stag. Among birds, crows and pari'ots have also been said to attain miraculous length of days ; among fishes, the carp and pike ; among reptiles, the tortoise. But modern investigation has sufficiently proved that the number of centuries, variously assigned as the natural age of these birds, beasts and fishes, was, in the first instance, the invention of poets and fabulists, carelessly adopted as authentic by lovers of the marvellous.

It is now ascertained that aloes frequently flower three times in a hundred years, and that three

B generations of the stag are included within the same space of time.

Hesiod, an ancient Greek poet whose works have only partially reached us, was the first to institute a comparative inquiry into the age of the crow and the stag. Hesiod assigns eighty-six years as the average span of human life ; yet he asserts that the rook attains eight hundred and sixty-four years, and the crow thrice as many. Towards the stag, he is still more liberal ; declaring that these animals have been known to attain their thirty-fifth century. Considering the age we assign to the world itself when Hesiod flourished in it, no great experience as to the average existence of so sempiternal an animal could have influenced his opinion.

According to many ancient WTiters besides Hesiod, the stag is the longest lived of animals ; and the Egyptians have adopted it as the emblem of longevity. Pliny relates that one hundred years after the death of Alexander, several stags were taken in the different forests of Macedonia, to whose necks that great monarch had, with his own hand, attached coUars. This extension of existence is, however, scarcely worth recording, in comparison mth the instance commemorated by French historians, of a stag taken in the forest of Senlis, in the year 1037; having a collar round its neck on which was inscribed, " Csesar hoc me donavit."

A miraculous interpretation was assigned to this inscription, which has consequently formed the ground-work of a popular error in France. The " Caesar" of the legend was admitted, without further examination, to be Julius Caesar, thereby allotting ten centmies as the age of the animal ; na}^, seventyseven years more, seeing that Julius Caesar conquered Gaul forty-two years before the birth of Clirist. Nevertheless since the days of Julius, the title of Caesar had been bestowed on a sufficient number of imperial potentates to explain the inscription on the collar upon more rational grounds : the Caesar who had thus adorned the stag being in all probability its contemporary. But this was too simple an interpretation to be acceptable to those wonder-seeking times.

Aristotle decided the age of the stag, not from the showing of poets and traditions, but from the indications of experiment. Having dissected a considerable number of these animals, he pronounced their ordinary age to be was from thirty to thirty-six years. BufFon was of a similar opinion, which has been adopted by most succeeding naturalists. It has been established as a law of comparative physiology, that the life of a mammiferous animal is in proportion to its period of gestation, and the duration of its growth. The sheep and goat, who bear their young five months, and whose growth lasts

B 2 two years, live from eight to ten. The horse, which is borne ten months, and whose growth requires from five to six years, lives from thirty to forty. We are, of course, speaking of the horse in its natural state, uninjured by premature and excessive labour. When submitted to the hands of man, the noble animal is condemned to premature old age, by the application of spur and thong before it attains sufficient strength for the unnatural speed it is compelled to attempt, and the burthens it is forced to bear. Nor, even under these cii'cumstances, is it allowed to attain the span of life assigned by nature ; the hand of the knacker being put in request to end its days, the moment its services cease to be profitable to its master.

The camel, which is borne ten months, and requires four years for its bodily development, usually attains the age of fifty. The elephant, requiring a year's gestation, attains the climax of its growth at thirty, and lives to a hundred. The gestation of a stag, therefore, being but of eight months, there is no reason to infer a deviation in its favour from the laws governing the nature of all other animals of the same genus.

" The stag," says Buffon, " whose growth requires six years, lives from thirty to forty. The prodigious age originally ascribed to this animal, is a groundless invention of the poets, of which Aristotle demonstrated the absurdity."

A WORLD GF WONDERS. 5

A variety of instances of the miraculous longevity of animals may be found in the works of the early German naturalists. It is related in the collection of Voyages and Travels of Malte Brun, on the showing of these authorities, that the Emperor Frederick 11. having been presented with a singularly fine pike, caused it to be thrown into a pond adjoining his palace of Kaiserslautern, after affixing to it a collar bearing the the foUo^ving Greek inscription : " I am the first fish cast into this pond by the hands of the Emperor Frederick 11. ; October 5th, 1230."

After remaining two hundred and sixty years in the pond, the pike was taken in 1497, and carried to Heidelberg, to be served at the table of Ihe Elector Philip ; when the collar and inscription were subjected to the examination of the curious. The pike, at that time, weighed three hundred and fifty pounds, and was nineteen feet in length — a miraculous fish in every respect ; for how are we to suppose that an inscription upon an elastic collar would otherwise remain legible at the close of several centuries ? This story is evidently one of the marvels that figm-e so profusely in the chronicles of old Germany during the middle ages.

It has, however, often been asserted that aquatic animals are longer-lived than others, from being cold-blooded, and losing nothing from transpiration ; though, fi'om their peculiar nature, the fact is b A WORLD OF WONDERS.

very difficult of demonstration. Fordyce made some curious experiments upon the tenacity of life in fishes ; by placing gold fishes in a variety of vessels filled with water ; which, at first, he refreshed every day ; then, every third day, with which refreshment, and without other nourishment, they lived for fifteen months. He next distilled the water ; increased the proportion of air in the vessels ; and closed the apertures, so that no insect could possibly penetrate. Nevertheless, the fish lived as before, and were in good condition.

The experimentalist now decided that the decomposition of the air afforded them sufficient nutriment ; by this theory invalidating the proverb *that it is impossible to live on air.'

Without impugning the authenticity of these experiments, or the easy sustenance of fishes, we may be permitted to observe that a variety of circumstances are unfavourable to the fact of their miraculous longevity. In the first place, their organization, especially that of the carp which is supposed to be one of the longest-lived of fishes, is peculiarly delicate ; and the muscular effort to move in an element eight hundred times heavier than atmospheric air, must be apt to exhaust the energies of life. Such are the suggestions of common sense ; too often unavailing against the marvels of tradition, accepted by the credulity of mankind.

The Parisians delight in boasting of the age of the venerable carp in the reservoirs at Fontainebleau and Chantilly ; the former especially, as contemporary with Francis I. Other credulous persons declare that there exist gigantic carp many centuries old, in the water beneath the Cathedral of Strasboui'g — a fact easily asserted because impossible to disprove.

With respect to the tame old carp at Fontainebleau, which come to the surface of the water to be fed by every visitor to that curious old palace, the only grounds for asserting their great age is the inconclusive fact, that there were tame old grey carp in the moat of Fontainebleau in the reign of Francis L, as at the present time. But who is to prove that they are identical ? There were also troops and courtiers at Fontainebleau at both epochs, whom it would be just as reasonable to assert were the same persons. The only difference is that the generations of men are visibly renewed ; wliile the carp in the old moat slip away unnoticed, and are succeeded by a younger fry.

The longevity of certain species of the feathered kind has been just as much exaggerated as that of the stag and the carp. Willoughby states in his work on Ornithology, that a friend of his possessed a gander eighty years of age ; which in the end became so ferocious that they were forced to kill it, in consequence of the havock it committed in the barn-yard. He also talks of a swan three centuries old; and several celebrated parrots are said to have attained from one hundred to one hundred and fifty years.

The experiments of able naturalists afford the best answer to such statements. According to the best established authorities, pigeons, fowls, and ducks, live, in a natural state, from ten to twelve years. Magpies, crows, and jays, evince symptoms of caducity at the same age. Professor Hufeland, of Jena, who has devoted considerable time and attention to the study of the duration of life, assures us that the great eagle, and other birds of the larger kind, such as the pelican and ostrich, ai-e very longlived and of vigorous constitution. Specimens of the eagle tribe have been known, however, to survive in a menagerie upwards of a hundred years.

Hufeland relates that a Mr. Selwand, of London, received in 1793, from the Cape of Good Hope, a falcon wearing a golden collar inscribed " To His Majesty, King James of England, 161 0." The bird was supposed to have belonged to James I., and having escaped from its keepers, in order to avoid recapture, to have traversed Europe and Africa, to end its days in a state of nature among the Hottentots ! Destiny, however, was not to be defied ; and the prisoner was recaptured in its old age, and sent back to England. This incident probably originated in a hoax upon the credulity of Mr. Selwand, practised by one of his colonial correspondents. Moreover, Hufeland, after publishing 'his conviction of the prodigious longevity of the eagle tribe, was himself very likely to become the object of one of those mystifications, for which the supporters of new theories are considered fair game.

Credulity is imfortunately a weakness common to the human race ; and a tendency to exaggeration is scarcely less universal. Between the two failings, monstrous stories obtain circulation ; and as it is easier to assent than examine, the world becomes overrun with en'ors and prejudices. A curious anecdote related from mouth to mouth, becomes exaggerated into a miracle. Thus, as regards the longevity of parrots, a bird of this species which happens to suiwive three generations of the same family, though the period may not exceed thirty years, is talked of in the circle of their acquaintance as a Nestor or Methuselah ; till, at last, from exaggeration to exaggeration, its age becomes converted into a miracle. No one, however, can personally attest the age of a parrot beyond fifty or sixty years. All the rest must be hearsay.

Among curious examples of longevity in animals, the dog of Ulysses is cited, by many ancient authors, for the intelligence displayed in his recognition of his master after twenty years' absence. A mule, which lived to the age of ninety years, at Athens, has also been frequently cited.

The historian, Mezeray, relates, 'on the authority of Flodard, that Loup Asnard, Duke of Aquitaine, on coming to do homage to Raoul, King of France, about the beginning of the tenth century, appeared before the monarch mounted on a horse a hundred years old. Such exceptions, however, even if authentic, tend no more to prove the longevity of dogs, horses or mules, than the incontestible fact that certain men, even in modern times, have survived to the age of a century and a half, tend to establish that period as the span of human existence.

CHAPTER 11.

INCOMBUSTIBLE MEN.

There are instances in which it may be fairly said that seeing is not beheving. In the case of a variety of persons who have exhibited themselves, in different times and coimtries, as endowed with the natural power of resistance to fire, the frightful feats displayed serve onJy to convince the spectator, that the incombustibility of the exhibitants is but a skilful effort of legerdemain.

It may be observed that the persons who pretend to this miraculous faculty, seldom expose themselves to the hazard of the investigations of the scientific world. For the exhibition of their exploits, they usually prefer small towns to great cities. In former days, incombustible men assumed, in Spain, the name of saludores ; and most of those who have since exhibited , in public their insensibihty to fire, are descendants or imitators of these Spanish mountebanks. The saludoreSj however, pretended to a power of curing all sorts of diseases by means of their saliva ; whereas, the incombustible individuals who have figured in France and Germany, pretend only to handle fire with impunity, to swallow boiling oil, v>^alk upon glowing embers, or even among fiames ; all which exploits they accomplish with perfect selfpossession. So long as two hundred years ago, however, the saludores were recognised as impostors. Leonard Vain relates a story of one of them, who, having pretended to the faculty of sustaining the heat of a kindled oven, was forced by the populace into one, without sufficient preparation; on opening which, at the close of an hour, the man was found to be calcined. A somewhat severe mode of punishing imposture !

This example, however, did not serve to extinguish the race; and in 1806, a man who called himself the mu'aculous Spaniard, opened an exhibition in Paris, where he renewed all the skilful marvels of his predecessors, by walking barefooted on red hot iron, dra\^dng heated bars across his arms, face and tongue, dipping his hands in molten lead, and swallowing, as if with zest, a glass of boiling oil. This exhibition, to which the idlers of the French capital resorted, produced a careful examination into the precedents of antiquity for similar instances of incombustibility.

Some cited the well-known lines of Virgil, with reference to the exhibitions of the priests of Apollo, on Mount Soracte, where they walked unhurt, in presence of the worshippers of their di\dnity, upon burning embers. Others quoted the equally doubtful authority of Pliny ; who relates the same fact, adding that the privilege of incombustibility was hereditary in a specific family; a fact the more remarkable, because all the modern jugglers in this branch of the black art, pretend to descend from St. Catherine.

Varro, less credulous than Pliny, expressly states that the priests of the Temple of Soracte possessed the secret of a composition which rendered them fire-proof.

Long after Van^o, Strabo 'related that the votaries of the goddess Feronia obtained, as the price of their devotions, the faculty of walking unhurt over burning piles ; and that the exhibition of this miraculous power before her altars, attracted numerous spectators. " The worship of the goddess Feronia," says Strabo, " is much in vogue ; her temple being remarkable as the site of a miracle. Those persons whose prayers the goddess deigns to propitiate, are enabled to defy the most ardent flames. This miracle is renewed at her annual festival."

It is also related that, not far from the city of Thyane, the birth-place of Apollonius, there was a celebrated temple dedicated to Diana Persica; the virgins devoted wherein to the worship of the goddess of Chastity, possessed the power and privilege of treading unhurt upon burning embers. A confirmation of these wonders is to be found in Aristotle and Apuleius.

When the visitors of the miraculous Spaniard had satisfied themselves, that antiquity supplied a variety of examples in substantiation of the power to which he pretended, modern history was searched for further attestation ; when it appeared that Ambrose Pare and Cardan, depose to having seen mountebanks so inured to the efi'ects of molten lead and boiling oil, that they were able to wash their faces and hands, unhurt, with those terrible materials. Dehio, Delancre, and Bodin, advance many curious facts of a similar nature.

Had these incombustible individuals existed in the days when trial by ordeal was still a form of law ; or, rather, had the Art of Chemistry attained at that period the power of hardening the human skin into resistance of fire, the secret would have been invaluable.

In those barbarous ages, a culprit sentenced to the fiery ordeal of walking upon heated ploughshares, or plunging his limbs into boiling oil, was tacitly condemned to death. We may infer, however, that Kings, Queens, and Dignitaries of the Church were of a less combustible nature than humbler mortals ; for when these were forced to submit to the terrible ordeal of fire, it was observed that they escaped unsinged ; while serfs and beggars, burnt like tinder : an understanding with the cruel executioners of these savage laws, being essential to establish the innocence of an accused person.

It would appear as though a sinister influence had always attached itself to the ill-fated See of Autun ; for one of the first instances on record of the ordeal of fire being applied to a member of the hierarchy, was that of Simplicius, Bishop of Autun, who, after submitting to it in his life-time, was canonized after death. Two later Bishops of Autun — the Abbe Roquette, said to be the original of the Tartuffe of Moli^re, and the Pnnce de Talleyrand, one of the most remarkable personages of modern times, have certainly not experienced the same posthumous distinction.

Simplicius, being a married man, when called to the honours of the See of Autun, repudiated his wife, to whom he was tenderly attached. He was, nevertheless, accused of retaining her conjugally in his palace after his promotion to the mitre; in disproof of which, he submitted, and caused his beloved wife to submit to the fiery ordeal in presence of a vast congregation ; when, both having escaped unhurt, Simplicius was eventually promoted to the honour, of the Calendar.

St. Brie, the successor of St. Martin in the See of Tours, was also accused of having become a father, to the discredit of his episcopal functions; a charge he is said to have defeated by bestowing powers of speech upon the infant, thereby enabling it to name its real father. In addition to this exculpation, he submitted to the fiery ordeal; and having gathered up his robe, and filled it with burning embers, proceeded in this guise to the tomb of his predecessor, St. Martin, without experiencing the slightest injury. It is not added in the legend, whether the garments of the Bishop were also uninjured.

One of the most celebrated trials by fire on record, is that of Thuitberge, wife of Lothaire, King of France. Having been accused of more than becoming intimacy with the young Prince, her brother, and condemned to the ordeal, she had the good fortune to find a champion willing to undertake it in her behalf. These champions or proxies were tantamount to the special pleaders of the present day, being mostly hired by fee or reward for the purpose. The champion of Thuitberge managed to establish her innocence, by plunging his arm without injury into a cauldron of boiling water; after which, Lothaii-e was compelled to admit the injustice of his accusation, and retain her as his wife. Even at that epoch, however, mistrust had arisen on this score ; and certain sei-vitors of the King openly insinuated the existence of chemical compositions, by the application of which a man might fortify his flesh against the action of boiling fluids. Appeal from the decision of an ordeal was, however, decided to be impossible.

A celebrated Father of the Oratoire, the Pere Lebrun, published a recipe purporting to insure impunity against fire ; consisting of equal parts of alcohol, sulphur, ammonia, essence of rosemary, and onion juice. At the moment Pere Lebrun was devoting himself to experiments on the mysteries of incombustibles, an English practician, named Richardson, was amazing the world of science by the performance of prodigies. This person contrived to walk upon burning embers, to place burning sulphur upon his hand, then transferring it to his tongue, allow it to consume away \^dthout apparent injury. He also allowed a piece of meat, or an oyster, to be cooked upon his tongue; the fire for the purpose being kept up in a live coal by a pair of bellows. He was also able to grasp a red hot bar of iron, and even seize it between his teeth; to swallow molten glass and a mixture of burning pitch and sulphur, so that the flames burst from his mouth as from that of a furnace ; just as common mountebanks emit fire from their mouths by means of a coal wrapt in tow, which has been previously steeped in spirits of wine.

These experiments attracted so much attention,

c that scientific men considered them deserving notice ; and in 1677, Dodart, of the French Academy of Sciences, addressed a letter on the subject to the Jom-nal de Science, proving that such phenomena might be achieved by time, address, and perseverance, without the intervention of chemical agency. The ordinary hardening of the hands and feet by labour and exercise, certainly induce a belief that perseverance in the same means might be made to produce absolute callosity.

It is well known, that bakers are remarkable for the muscularity of their arms and shghtness of their legs ; while dancers have usually slender arms and muscular legs. The difference of exercise, necessitated by their several professions, producing diverse development of limb. On the other hand, there is no need to compare the sole of the foot of a lady who seldom goes out, unless in a carriage, or treads on any other material than luxurious carpets, with that of a peasant who goes bare-footed on the flinty road, without inconvenience, to be assured that the same degree of boiling water which could be sustained by the latter without inconvenience, would blister the dehcate epidermis of the former.

Dodart observes that, in the ordinary circumstances of life, some people are able to swallow their food much hotter than others ; and that, as regards the experiments of Richardson, charcoal loses its heat the moment it is extinguished, and is easily extinguished by means of the human saliva. It is a common trick of jugglers to put lighted tapers into their mouths ; and in the attempts made by Richardson to cook a piece of meat upon his tongue, the slice was made so to envelop the ember, as to secure his mouth from contact with the fire ; while the bellows used during the process, on pretence of keeping up the flame, were on the contrary, intended to cool the mouth. As to the mixtures of boiling wax, pitch and sulphur, Dodart states their temperature to have been such, that he could hold his finger in them two seconds without pain. It is well known that the workmen in the foundries are so inured to heat, as to touch, without injury, metals in a state of fusion; frequently plunging their hands into molten lead, in order to recover articles of value. Moreover, as regards any ignited substance placed in the mouth, it naturally becomes extinguished the moment the lips are reclosed; the gas from the human lungs tending especially to that purpose.

About the year 1774, there lived at the foundry of Laune, a man who could walk unharmed over bars of red-hot iron, and hold burning coals in his hands. The skin of this man was observed to emit a sort of unctuous transpiration, which served as his preservative.

These facts suffice to prove that the miraculous

c 2

Spaniard, who affected preternatural incombustibility, had no need of magic for the working of his wonders. For another case, equally remarkable, we are indebted to Sementini, an eminent Professor of Chemistry at Naples.

A Sicilian, named Lionetti, came to that city for the pui'pose of exhibiting feats of incombustibility; and soon excited public astonishment by his power of drawing a red-hot plate of iron over his hair without singeing it, on which he afterwards stamped with his naked feet. He also drew rods of red-hot iron through his mouth, swallowed boiling oil, dipped his fingers in molten lead, and dropped some on his tongue. He fearlessly exposed his face to the flames of burning oil ; poured sulphuric or mui'iatic acid upon lighted embers, and imbibed the fumes ; ending by allowing a thick gold pin to be thrust deep into his flesh.

The Neapolitans were as much enchanted by the feats of Lionetti as the Parisian with those of the incombustible Spaniard. But at Naples, Sementini, who was on the watch, perceived that, at the moment the fire-proof man applied the heated materials to his skin, there escaped a whitish vapour. Instead of swallowing a glass of boihng oil, according to his announcement, he introduced only a quarter of a spoonful into his mouth, and a few drops of molten lead upon his tongue, which was covered with a white fur, like the secretion perceptible in cases of fever. When he took the hot iron between his teeth, symptoms of suppressed pain were perceptible ; and the edges of his teeth were evidently charred by previous performances of a similar description. From these appearances, Sementini inferred that Lionetti made use of certain preparations which secured him against the influence of heat, by hardening the epidermis ; and that his skin having become caUous from use, was in itself able to resist, to a certain degree, the action of fii'e. These conclusions, which concur with those made by Dodart, in the case of Richardson, were verified by personal observation and careful experiment.