According to Brewster, persons who experience no malaise near a fire which communicates a temperature of 100° C. to them, can hardly bear contact with alcohol and oil at 55° and mercury at 48°. The facts adduced permit us to understand how it was possible to bear one of the proofs to which it is said those were submitted who wished to be initiated into the Egyptian mysteries. In a vast vaulted chamber nearly a hundred feet long, there were erected two fences formed of posts, around which were wound branches of Arabian balm, Egyptian thorn, and tamarind--all very flexible and inflammable woods. When this was set on fire the flames arose as far as the vault, licked it, and gave the chamber the appearance of a hot furnace, the smoke escaping through pipes made for the purpose. Then the door was suddenly opened before the neophyte, and he was ordered to traverse this burning place, whose floor was composed of an incandescent grating. The Abbé Terrason recounts all these details in his historic romance "Sethos," printed at the end of last century. Unfortunately literary frauds were in fashion then, and the book, published as a translation of an old Greek manuscript, gives no indication of sources. I have sought in special works for the data which the abbé must have had as a basis, but I have not been able to find them. I suppose, however, that this description, which is so precise, is not merely a work of the imagination. The author goes so far as to give the dimensions of the grating (30 feet by 8), and, greatly embarrassed to explain how his hero was enabled to traverse it without being burned, is obliged to suppose it to have been formed of very thick bars, between which Sethos had care to place his feet. But this explanation is inadmissible. He who had the courage to rush, head bowed, into the midst of the flames, certainly would not have amused himself by choosing the place to put his feet. Braving the fire that surrounded his entire body, he must have had no other thought than that of reaching the end of his dangerous voyage as soon as possible. We cannot see very well, moreover, how this immense grate, lying on the ground, was raised to a red heat and kept at such a temperature. It is infinitely more simple to suppose that between the two fences there was a ditch sufficiently deep in which a fire had also been lighted, and which was covered by a grating as in the Aldini experiments. It is even probable that this grating was of copper, which, illuminated by the fireplace, must have presented a terrifying brilliancy, while in reality it served only to prevent the flames from the fireplace reaching him who dared to brave them. * * * * * THE BUILDING STONE SUPPLY.