One of the things which strikes the popular mind the most vividly in the British Turkish bath is the _high temperature_. When we call to mind that a hot bath is scalding at 110°, and a vapour bath at 120°, we are astonished to hear of a bath that is enjoyable at 20°, 30°, and even 50° above the temperature of scalding water. Nay, more, that can be borne without inconvenience at _double_ the temperature of scalding water. Mr. Witt, one evening at a dinner-party, explained the curious difference of action of heat on living and dead organic matter. A few days after, a baronet, who was one of the party, visited Mr. Witt in his bath, and wrote to an incredulous friend as follows:--"I have been at Mr. Witt's bath; all that he told us is true. I cooked a mutton-chop on my knee! and in eating it afterwards the only inconvenience that I experienced was in the matter of the bread--it became toast before I could get it to my mouth." Since I first published this anecdote, a very matter-of-fact gentleman has written to me to say: "Well! I can believe the mutton-chop, but is not the bread changing to toast in its way to the mouth a little too much for credit?" I can best answer my matter-of-fact friend by saying, that in Mr. Urquhart's bath at Riverside, I sat for at least ten minutes, and without the slightest inconvenience, in his Laconicum, at a temperature of 240°--namely, 28° degrees above the boiling-point of water. If I had had bread, or meat, or eggs with me, they must necessarily have been cooked at that heat. But in reality there is nothing wonderful in all this. I am informed that during the Indian mutiny, the heat in the tents was sometimes as high as 140°. Sir Charles Blagden remained for ten minutes in a room heated to 260°. Sir Francis Chantrey's oven, in which his moulds were dried, and which was constantly entered by his men, was heated to 350°. The ovens in the slate-enamelling works of Mr. Magnus, at Pimlico, also habitually entered by the workmen, have a temperature of 350°. And the oven in which Chabert, the so-called Fire King, exhibited in London some years back, was heated to 400° and 500°.