ON SOME APPARATUS THAT PERMIT OF ENTERING FLAMES. [Footnote: A. de Rochas in the _Revue Scientifique_.] In the following notes I shall recall a few experiments that indicate under what conditions the human organism is permitted to remain unharmed amid flames. These experiments were published in England in 1882, in the twelfth letter from Brewster to Walter Scott on natural magic. They are, I believe, not much known in France, and possess a practical interest for those who are engaged in the art of combating fires. At the end of the last century Humphry Davy observed that, on placing a very fine wire gauze over a flame, the latter was cooled to such a point that it could not traverse the meshes. This phenomenon, which he attributed to the conductivity and radiating power of the metal, he soon utilized in the construction of a lamp for miners. Some years afterward Chevalier Aldini, of Milan, conceived the idea of making a new application of Davy's discovery in the manufacture of an envelope that should permit a man to enter into the midst of flames. This envelope, which was made of metallic gauze with 1-25th of an inch meshes, was composed of five pieces, as follows: (1) a helmet, with mask, large enough, to allow a certain space between it and the internal bonnet of which I shall speak; (2) a cuirass with armlets; (3) a skirt for the lower part of the belly and the thighs; (4) a pair of boots formed of a double wire gauze; and (5) a shield five feet long by one and a half wide, formed of metallic gauze stretched over a light iron frame. Beneath this armor the experimenter was clad in breeches and a close coat of coarse cloth that had previously been soaked in a solution of alum. The head, hands, and feet were covered by envelopes of asbestos cloth whose fibers were about a half millimeter in diameter. The bonnet contained apertures for the eyes, nose, and ears, and consisted of a single thickness of fabric, as did the stockings, but the gloves were of double thickness, so that the wearer could seize burning objects with the hands. Aldini, convinced of the services that his apparatus might render to humanity, traveled over Europe and gave gratuitous representations with it. The exercises generally took place in the following order: Aldini began by first wrapping his finger in asbestos and then with a double layer of wire gauze. He then held it for some instants in the flame of a candle or alcohol lamp. One of his assistants afterward put on the asbestos glove of which I have spoken, and, protecting the palm of his hand with another piece of asbestos cloth, seized a piece of red-hot iron from a furnace and slowly carried it to a distance of forty or fifty meters, lighted some straw with it, and then carried it back to the furnace. On other occasions, the experimenters, holding firebrands in their hands, walked for five minutes over a large grating under which fagots were burning.