horn or leather, though his hand was not burnt.
The workmen at the Swedish melting-house showed the same thing to some travellers in the seventeenth century; for Regnard saw it in 1681, at the copper-works in Lapland.
My friend Quincy Kilby, of Brookline, Mass., saw the same stunt performed by workmen at the Meridan Brittania Company's plant. They told him that if the hand had been wet it would have been badly scalded.
Thus far our interest in heat-resistance has uncovered secrets of no very great practical value, however entertaining the uses to which we have seen them put. But not all the investigation of these principles has been dictated by considerations of curiosity and entertainment. As long ago as 1829, for instance, an English newspaper printed the following:
Proof against Fire—On Tuesday week an experiment was made in presence of a Committee of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, by M. Aldini, for the purpose of showing that he can secure the body
