162 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. L. No. 1285 



tas been appointed to tlie cliair of chemistry 

 in tlie University of Aberdeen in succession to 

 Professor Frederick Soddy. 



Sm J. J. Thomson, master of Trinity Col- 

 lege, Cambridge, who recently resigned the 

 Cavendish professorship of experimental phys- 

 ics, has been elected into the newly established 

 professorship of physics. This professorship is 

 vidthout stipend, and will terminate with the 

 tenure of office of the first professor unless the 

 university determines otherwise. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



FIRE-WALKING IN JAPAN 



During my four years' residence in Japan 

 I had several opportunities 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 

 live charcoal, throw boiling water over them- 

 selves and climb a ladder of sharp swords set 

 edge upward. All these pretended miracles, 

 however, are susceptible of scientific explana- 

 tion, and it is only with regard to the first- 

 mentioned — the fire-walliing — that I venture 

 to ask the privilege of making a brief state- 

 ment 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 

 intelligent 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 be- 

 lieved that it is solely to their incantations 

 that they owe their protection from injury. 

 But it is not necessary to be a very close ob- 

 server of their movements to perceive that the 

 priests are not content with their perambula- 

 tions, genuflexions and prayers, but are care- 

 ful to rub their bare feet with salt, ostensibly 

 for purificatory purposes^ before walking over 

 the fire. This fact brought to my recollection 

 the occasion, forty years ago or more, when 

 Tyndall astonished a distinguished audience 

 at the Eoyal Institution by plunging his bare 

 arm into molten metal, the then Prince of 

 Wales, afterward King Edward VII., who was 



present, being prevented from following Tyn- 

 dall's example only by the determined oppo- 

 sition of his wife. 



So sure did I feel of the efficacy of the salt 

 as a protective agent "Qiat on my second visit 

 to the temple I determined to follow the 

 priests in their apparently hazardous adven- 

 ture, and so after rubbing my feet well in the 

 pile of salt, I walked rapidly over the bed of 

 glowing coal, some eighteen 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 William Crookes, who not long 

 before had mentioned to me his association 

 with TsTidall in some of the experiments that 

 preceded the delivery of the latter's famous 

 " Lectures on Light." In due course I re- 

 ceived Sir William's reply, in which after 

 reference to certain matters of no special in- 

 terest in this connection, he said: 



I do not know of any published account of Tyn- 

 dall's putting his bare arm into molten metal, but 

 I can well believe it, as I myself have plunged my 

 hand into molten, almost red-hot, lead. I was in a 

 profuse perspiration at the time, and, immediately 

 before, I dipped my hand into strong ammonia, to 

 increase the spheroidal effect. I do not think the 

 extra precaution was of much use, but I did not 

 like to take a risk when looking at the cauldron of 

 hot metal. 



To physicists there is nothing new in all 

 this, but not every scientific man is a physi- 

 cist, or hypnotism would not have been sug- 

 gested to me, as it has been, as the secret of 

 the remarkable immunity I experienced. 



John Hyde 



Washington, D. C. 



MARCHING in STEP 



To THE Editor op Science : In regard to 

 Walter Moore Coleman's note in the April IS 

 number of Science concerning variations in 

 phase in the step of a column of soldiers it 



