304 



LETTERS ON NATURAL MAGIC. 



chair, and his heels upon another, as in Fig. 5d, forming 

 with his back-bone, thighs, and legs, an arch springing 

 from its abutments at A and B. One or two men then 

 stood upon his belly, rising up and down while the per- 



Fig. 54. 



former breathed. A stone one and a half feet long, one 

 foot broad, and half a foot thick, was then laid upon his 

 belly and broken by a sledge-hammer, an operation which 

 may be performed with much less danger than when his 

 back touched the ground, as in Fig. 53. 



5. His next feat was to lie down on the ground as in 

 Fig. 55. A man being then placed on his knees, he draws 

 his heels towards his body, and raising his knees, he lifts 

 up the man gradually, till having brought his knees 

 perpendicularly under him, as in Fig. 56, lie raises his 

 own body up, and placing his arms around the man's legs, 

 he rises with him, and sets him down on somo low table 

 or eminence of the same height as his knees. This feat 

 he sometimes performed with two men in place of one. 



