Fulton. — On the Fiji Fire-walking Ceremony. 199 



A portion of the stone was examined at Washington, and 

 was described by Professor Langley as follows : " It was a 

 volcanic stone, and on minute examination proved to be 

 a vesicular basait, the most distinctive feature of which was 

 its extreme porosity and non-conductibility, for it was 

 subsequently found that it could have been heated red hot 

 at one end while remaining comparatively cool at the top. 

 Its conductibility was so extremely small that one end of 

 a fragment could be held in the hand while the other end 

 was heated indefinitely in the flame of a blow-pipe." 



Mr. R. M. Laing, M.A., B.Sc, in an article in the Christ- 

 church Weekly Press of the 16th July, gives a brief account 

 of the "fire-walk" as witnessed by various persons in dif- 

 ferent countries, and criticizes Professor Langley's report 

 adversely. He describes the Professor's experiment to deter- 

 mine the heat of the stone, and then goes on to draw con- 

 clusions, which Professor Langley was most particular to 

 refrain from doing. All that Professor Langley said was that 

 the mean heat of the stone which he had seen walked upon 

 was, "at the time of removal from the oven, about 1,200° F., 

 but that the walked-upon surface was almost certainly in- 

 definitely lower." He stated that the stone was a very 

 poor conductor of heat, and gave its specific heat and its 

 specific gravity. He advanced no theory, but confined him- 

 self to facts as seen in the laboratory. He made no en- 

 deavour to show how one surface might be colder than 

 another in the lovo. Mr. Laing, however, proceeds thus : 

 "Professor Langley's argument is this: It is quite true that 

 the under-surface of the stone was at a very high tempera- 

 ture, but, being a piece of vesicular basalt, it was a very bad 

 conductor of heat, and consequently its upper surface must 

 have been indefinitely lower in temperature, and therefore 

 low enough to enable the native sole to rest momentarily in 

 contact with it and not be burnt. Now, there is a specious 

 appearance of scientific exactitude about this ' argument ' 

 very apt to mislead the unwary. . . . It at once enables 

 the reader to point out the defects of his ' argument.' It 

 depends entirely upon the assumption that the upper surface 

 of the stone is comparatively cold, and that the contact with 

 it is only instantaneous." Mr. Laing then says, " It is quite 

 true that in this case, as in so many others, appearances may 

 be deceptive, and that the upper surface of the stones may not 

 always be at a red heat, and may, indeed, in some cases be 

 comparatively cooV{k). That is exactly what Professor 

 Langley did his best to find out, and what in this paper I 

 have endeavoured to prove, and Mr. Laing's use of that 

 paragraph destroys, to my mind, the whole of his criticism. 

 Professor Langley made use of no such terms as " upper 



