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to make an artificial volcano.
For this curious experiment, which enables us to assign a very probable cause for volcanoes, we are indebted to Lemery. Mix equal parts of pounded sulphur and iron filings, and having formed the whole into a paste with water, bury a certain quantity of it, forty or fifty pounds for example, at the depth of about a foot below the surface of the earth. In ten or twelve hours after, the earth will swell up and burst, and flames will issue out, which will enlarge the aperture, scattering around a yellow and blackish dust. It is not impossible that what is here seen in miniature, takes place on a grand scale in volcanoes: as it is well known that they always furnish abundance of sulphur, and that the matters they throw up abound in metallic, and probably ferruginous particles; for iron is the only metal which has the property of producing an effervescence with sulphur, when they are mixed together. But it may easily be conceived, from the effect of a small quantity of the above mixture, what thousands of millions of pounds of it would produce; there is no doubt that the result would be phenomena as terrible as those of earthquakes and of volcanic eruptions, with which they are generally accompanied.
how to eat fire, and to blow it up in your mouth.
Anoint your tongue with liquid storax, and you may put a pair of tongs into your mouth red hot, without hurting yourself, and lick them till they are cold, by the help of this ointment; and by preparing your mouth thus, you may take wood coal out of the fire, and eat it like bread; dip it then into brimstone powder, and the fire will seem more strange, but the sulphur puts out the coal. You may put a piece of burning charcoal into your mouth, and suffer a pair of bellows to be blowing it continually, and receive no hurt, but your mouth must be quickly cleaned, otherwise it will cause a salivation: it is a very dangerous thing to be done, and although those that practise it, use all the means they can to prevent danger, yet it is seldom these fire-eaters have a good complexion.
