650 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



kind of shield against the heat. Then, pretending to take new tow 

 with the left hand, they introduce into the mouth the parcel of in- 

 flamed tinder, on which they immediately place dry tow by biting into 

 the right handful. Combustion is excited by blowing with the throat, 

 and the current of air protects the lips from burning. 



I have repeated the experiment of a pretended boiling described in 

 the " Philosophumena," using oil instead of liquid pitch. It produced 

 a complete illusion. The oil boiled in large bubbles, throwing up to 

 the surface a white foam, without its being necessary to raise the tem- 

 perature to more than 86. 



I have not tried either of the processes for producing insensibility 

 described above, nor those which are given by Albertus Magnus and 

 other sorcerers of the middle ages, as follows : 



"1. Take mallows- juice, powdered psillium-seed, and lime ; mix 

 the whole with the white of an egg and horse-radish-juice. Rub the 

 hands with the mixture and let them dry ; then rub them again, and 

 you will be able to handle fire. 



" 2. Dissolve quicklime in bean-water, then mix in Messina earth, 

 to which add a little mallows and bird-lime ; rub yourself with it and 

 let it dry. 



" 3. Rub your hands with strong vinegar in which you have dis- 

 solved vitriol, and add plantain-juice." 



It was probably by the aid of similar recipes that the priestesses 

 of Diana Parasya, in Cappadocia, according to Strabo, were able to 

 walk barefooted over burning coals ; and the Hirpi, according to Pliny, 

 procured exemption from military service by renewing the same mira- 

 cle annually in the Temple of Apollo, on Mount Soracte. In our own 

 time the Arabian sect of the Aissaouas perform feats quite as astonish- 

 ing as those we have mentioned. The subject might afford entertaining 

 studies to those who are interested in finding natural ways of account- 

 ing for facts which have been regarded as prodigies. Revue Scien- 

 tifique. 







ELECTKOMAETA. 



By TV. MATTIEU WILLIAMS. 



A HISTORY of electricity, in order to be complete, must include 

 two distinct and very different subjects : the history of elec- 

 trical science, and a history of electrical exaggerations and delusions. 

 The progress of the first has been followed by a crop of the second 

 from the time when Kleist, Muschenbroek, and Cuneus endeavored to 

 bottle the supposed fluid, and in the course of these attempts stumbled 

 upon the " Leyden-jar." 



Dr. Lieberkuhn, of Berlin, describes the startling results which he 



