50 THE UNIVERSE. 



as completely against desiccation as a thick woollen 

 mantle j^rotects the Arab from the burning heat of the sun. 



This brief account will suffice to overthrow flatly the 

 incombustibihty of the tardigrades ; reason rejects, and 

 experiment condemns it. 



But there is even a greater fondness for resurrections, 

 which are in fact still more marvellous. 



This phenomenon, triply false, was the great attraction 

 of an entire generation; our fathers diverted themselves 

 with it, and learned men played on the credulity of their 

 pupils by means of it. Spallanzani and Eonnet refer to 

 it in their correspondence again and again: the former 

 even headed one of the chapters in his great work "Animals 

 which can be Killed and Resuscitated at Pleasure," a title 

 Avliich did not fail to attract his readers, and stimulate 

 their curiosity to the highest pitch. 



Nevertheless, Spallanzani seems at times to have had 

 serious doubts on the subject of revivification, for in one 

 part of his writings he speaks of it as constituting the 

 most paradoxieal truth that tJie liistonj of the animal 

 kingdom offers us, and that we cannot manifest too much 

 dread of, or be too susjyicious about, truths of this kind; a 

 very sensible remark. 



This strange and thrilling question aroused men's pas- 



tlie roof of wliicli rose a little aljove the head of the performer, was covered with 

 a heap of resinous wood. The human salamander began his promenade beneath 

 this at the time when the whole affair was a complete furnace, the flames of 

 which rose to a considerable height, and the heat of which compelled us to keep 

 at a considerable distance from it. 



The garments of this incondjustible being seemed to be of coarse cloth, and 

 at the time when he entered the furnace they .showed a vermilion red. But 

 when he came out for the first time I was sui-prised to see that they had become 

 ,as white as snow. The head of the experimenter was protected by a thick 

 helmet furnished with glass eyes, and he seemed to carry in the folds of his 

 dress an apparatus for yielding fresh air, by means of which he breathed in the 

 midst of a combustion so intense, that one entirely lost sight of him. 



