The power of the superior animals, and especially of man, to resist high degrees of temperature, is very extraordinary. The account of the performances of the “Fire King” already noticed, is a sufficient proof of this. Dr Southwood Smith, in his excellent treatise on “Animal Physiology,” gives a far more interesting description, however, of the accidental discovery of this property of life, from which we quote the following particulars:--“In the year 1760, at Rochefoucault, Messrs Du Hamel and Tillet, having occasion to use a large public oven on the same day in which bread had been baked in it, wished to ascertain with precision its degree of temperature. This they endeavoured to accomplish by introducing a thermometer into the oven at the end of a shovel. On being withdrawn, the thermometer indicated a degree of heat considerably above that of boiling water; but M. Tillet, convinced that the thermometer had fallen several degrees on approaching the mouth of the oven, and appearing to be at a loss how to rectify this error, a girl, one of the attendants on the oven, offered to enter and mark with a pencil the height at which the thermometer stood within the oven. The girl smiled at M. Tillet’s appearing to hesitate at this strange proposition, and entering the oven, marked with a pencil the thermometer as standing at 260 degrees of Fahrenheit’s scale. M. Tillet began to express his anxiety for the welfare of his female assistant, and to press her return. This female salamander, however, assuring him that she felt no inconvenience from her situation, remained there ten minutes longer, when at length, the thermometer standing at that time at 288 degrees, or 76 degrees above that of boiling water, she came out of the oven, her complexion indeed considerably heightened, but her respiration by no means quick or laborious. The publication of this transaction exciting a great degree of attention, several philosophers repeated similar experiments, amongst which the most accurate and decisive were those performed by Doctors Fordyce and Blagden. The rooms in which these celebrated experimenters conducted their researches were heated by flues in the floor. There was neither any chimney in them, nor any vent for the air, excepting through the crevice at the door. Having taken off his coat, waistcoat, and shirt, and being furnished with wooden shoes tied on with lint, Dr Blagden went into one of the rooms as soon as the thermometer indicated a degree of heat above that of boiling water. The first impression of this heated air upon his body was exceedingly disagreeable, but in a few minutes his uneasiness was removed by a profuse perspiration. At the end of twelve minutes he left the room, very much fatigued, but no otherwise disordered. The thermometer had risen to 220 degrees; the boiling point is 212 degrees. In other experiments it was found that a heat even of 260 degrees could be borne with tolerable ease.