"Fire being lighted on an altar, figures will appear to execute a round dance. The altars should be transparent, and of glass or horn. From the fire-place there starts a tube which runs to the base of the altar, where it revolves on a pivot, while its upper part revolves in a tube fixed to the fire-place. To the tube there should be adjusted other tubes (horizontal) in communication with it, which cross each other at right angles, and which are bent in opposite directions at their extremities. There is likewise fixed to it a disk upon which are attached figures which form a round. When the fire of the altar is lighted, the air, becoming heated, will pass into the tube; but being driven from the latter, it will pass through the small bent tubes and ... cause the tube as well as the figures to revolve." Father Kircher, who had at his disposal either many documents that we are not acquainted with, or else a very lively imagination, alleges (_Oedip. Æg._, t. ii., p. 338) that King Menes took much delight in seeing such figures revolve. Nor are the examples of holy fire-places that kindled spontaneously wanting in antiquity. Pliny (_Hist. Nat_., ii., 7) and Horace (_Serm., Sat. v._) tell us that this phenomenon occurred in the temple of Gnatia, and Solin (Ch. V.) says that it was observed likewise on an altar near Agrigentum. Athenæus (_Deipn_. i., 15) says that the celebrated prestidigitator, Cratisthenes, of Phlius, pupil of another celebrated prestidigitator named Xenophon, knew the art of preparing a fire which lighted spontaneously. Pausanias tells us that in a city of Lydia, whose inhabitants, having fallen under the yoke of the Persians, had embraced the religion of the Magi, "there exists an altar upon which there are ashes which, in color, resemble no other. The priest puts wood on the altar, and invokes I know not what god by harangues taken from a book written in a barbarous tongue unknown to the Greeks, when the wood soon lights of itself without fire, and the flame from it is very clear."