PROTO-BATHYSPHERES 43 



four hundred years ago John Taisnier accompanied Charles 

 V on his voyage to Africa and set down many accounts of 

 things scientific — real and imaginary — concerning mathe- 

 matics, magnetism, chiromancy, and judicial astrology. 

 His account of the bell seems reasonable and has the ring 

 of truth: 



"Were the ignorant vulgar told that one could descend 

 to the bottom of the Rhine, in the midst of the water, 

 without wetting one's clothes or any part of one's body, 

 and even carry a lighted candle to the bottom of the water, 

 they would consider it as altogether ridiculous and im- 

 possible. This, however, I saw done at Toledo in Spain, in 

 the year 1538, before the emperor Charles V, and almost 

 ten thousand spectators. The experiment was made by two 

 Greeks, who, taking a very large pot suspended by ropes 

 with the mouth downwards, fixed beams and planks in 

 the middle of its concavity, upon which they placed them- 

 selves, together with a candle. The pot was equipoised by 

 means of lead fixed round its mouth, so that when let 

 down towards the water no part of its circumference 

 should touch the water sooner than another, else the water 

 might easily have overcome the air included in it, and 

 have converted it into moist vapour." 



The inverted pot or kettle idea crops up again and 

 again, as with Sir Francis Bacon late in the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, when he described one with an original improve- 

 ment: 



"A hollow vessel, made of metal, was let down equally 



