180 BULLETIN 139, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Doctor Langley concludes: "It was a sight well worth seeing. It 

 was a most clever and interesting piece of savage magic, but from 

 the evidence I have just given I am obliged to say (almost regret- 

 fully) that it was not a miracle." ^^ 



" During my four years' residence in Japan I had several oppor- 

 tunities of witnessing the spectacular religious or quasi-religious cere- 

 mony periodically observed at the Ontake Temple, Tokyo, in the 

 course of which the officiating priests walk barefoot over a bed of Uve 

 charcoal, throw boiUng water over themselves, and cUmb a ladder of 

 sharp swords set edge upward. All these pretended miracles, how- 

 ever, are susceptible of scientific explanation, and it is only with 

 regard to the first mentioned, the fire walking, that I venture to ask 

 the privilege of making a brief statement in Science. 



" To the great mass of the spectators in the temple enclosure, who 

 do not usually include more than the merest sprinkling of the more 

 intelhgent and better-educated classes of the Japanese people, the 

 supposed miracles are the clearest demonstration of the supernatural 

 power of the priests, who would have it believed that it is solely to 

 their incantations that they owe their protection from injury. But 

 it is not necessary to be a very close observer of their movements to 

 perceive that the priests are not content with their perambulations, 

 genuflexions, and prayers, but are careful to rub their bare feet with 

 salt, ostensibly for purificatory purposes, before walking over the fire. 

 This fact brought to my recollection the occasion, 40 years or more, 

 when Tyndall astonished a distinguished audience at the Royal Insti- 

 tution by plunging his bare arm into molten metal, the then Prince 

 of Wales, afterward King Edward VII, who was present, being pre- 

 vented from following Tyndall's example only by the determined 

 opposition of his wife. 



"So sure did I feel of the efficacy of the salt as a protective agent 

 that on my second visit to the temple I determined to follow the priests 

 in their apparently hazardous adventm-e, and so after rubbing my 

 feet well in the pile of salt I walked rapidly over the bed of glowing 

 coal, some 18 feet long. My confidence was not misplaced. In my 

 feet I felt only a sensation of gentle warmth, but my ankles, to which 

 no salt was applied, were scorched. 



"After a careful examination of such of Tyndall's works as I had 

 access to at the Yokohama Club, without finding any reference to 

 the demonstration at the Royal Institution, I wrote to Sir Wilham 

 Crookes, who not long before had mentioned to me his association 

 with Tj^ndall in some of the experiments that preceded the deUvery 

 of the latter's famous 'Lectures on Light.' In due course I received 

 Sir William's repy, in which after reference to certain matters of no 

 special interest in this connection, he said: 



»S. p. Langley. The Fire Walk Ceremony in Tahiti, Ann. Rept., Smith. Inst., 1901, p. 539. 



