106 Some Particulars respecting the 
hand into melted lead, &c.?* To such I have always re- 
plied, Yes; I believe that an intimate relation subsists be- 
tween all these facts and the spheroidal state. And then, in 
my turn, I put this question, Have you witnessed the fact 
you refer to? The reply was invariably in the negative. 
I confess that all these reports and the wonderful legends 
which I had read in different workst respecting proofs by 
fire and incombustible men, admitted without reserve by 
some, and as stoutly denied by others, had greatly excited 
my curiosity, and made me eagerly desire to verify all those 
phenomena, and to recall them to the recollection of my con- 
temporaries ; for all this, alas! is as old as the world. él 
sub sole novum. 
I first wrote to my friend Dr Roche, who spends his life 
among the furnaces of Eure, and is physician to a part of the 
Cyclopean population who work there. I asked him to give 
me precise information. 
All that he could learn was, ‘‘ that one named Laforge, 
a man between thirty-five and thirty-six years of age, and very 
corpulent, walked barefooted over the hot iron from the fur- 
nace,’ but he had not seen him. This was not enough to 
dispel my doubts. 
I then applied to the foundry at Paris, when they laughed 
at me, and shewed me to the door. I did not insist, and re- 
tired somewhat discouraged, reflecting on the difficulties of 
verifying a single fact, even of the simplest kind. 
I was afterwards fortunate enough to meet with M. Alph. 
Michel, who resides among the forges of Franche-Comte. 
M. Michel obligingly promised to make inquiry into these 
facts, and solve my doubts. 
* I have said something respecting these facts, in a work entitled MNowvelle 
Branche de Physique, ou Etudes sur les corps a Vetat spheroidal, p. 36. 
+ Des erreurs et des préjugés repandus dans les diverses classes de la So- 
ciété, t. xi., p. 183. 
Dr Montagne, so well known in the learned world by his numerous works on 
botany and micography, has translated, upwards of forty years ago, a memoir 
of Professor Sementini of Naples, on the alleged phenomenon of incombusti- 
bility. In this memoir a description will be found of a great number of ex- 
periments on fire, and which Dr Montagne had often witnessed (Bulletin des 
Sciences Medicales, Juillet, 1809, p. 5. 
