These sparks are too feeble to do any harm, provided he inhales the air through his nostrils. The kindred art of walking on burning coals or red-hot iron remounts to the same antiquity. The priestesses of Diana at Castabala in Cappadocia were accustomed, according to Strabo, to walk over burning coals; and at the annual festival which was held in the temple of Apollo on Mount Soracte in Etruria, the Hirpi marched over burning coals, and on this account they were exempted from military service, and received other privileges from the Roman Senate. This power of resisting fire was ascribed even by Varro to the use of some liniment with which they anointed the soles of their feet. Of the same character was the art of holding red-hot iron in the hands or between the teeth, and of plunging the hands into boiling water or melted lead. About the close of the seventeenth century, an Englishman of the name of Richardson rendered himself famous by chewing burning coals, pouring melted lead upon his tongue, and swallowing melted glass. That these effects are produced partly by deception, and partly by a previous preparation of the parts subjected to the heat, can scarcely admit of a doubt. The fusible metal, composed of mercury, tin, and bismuth, which melts at a low temperature, might easily have been substituted in place of lead; and fluids of easy ebullition may have been used in place of boiling water. A solution of spermaceti or sulphuric ether, tinged with alkanet root, which becomes solid at 50° of Fahrenheit, and melts and boils with the heat of the hand, is supposed to be the substance which is used at Naples when the dried blood of St. Januarius melts spontaneously, and boils over the vessel which contains it.