than love of truth, has given two
receipts for making this eternal fire by a preparation of certain
minerals. More credible writers maintain that it is possible to make
lamps perpetually burning, and an oil at once inflammable and
inconsumable; but Boyle, assisted by several experiments made on the
air-pump, found that these lights, which have been viewed in opening
tombs, proceeded from the collision of fresh air. This reasonable
observation conciliates all, and does not compel us to deny the
accounts.

The story of the lamp of Rosicrucius, even if it ever had the slightest
foundation, only owes its origin to the spirit of party, which at the
time would have persuaded the world that Rosicrucius had at least
discovered something.

It was reserved for modern discoveries in chemistry to prove that air
was not only necessary for a medium to the existence of the flame, which
indeed the air-pump had already shown; but also as a constituent part of
the inflammation, and without which a body, otherwise very inflammable
in all its parts, cannot, however, burn but in its superficies, which
alone is in contact with the ambient air.

NATURAL PRODUCTIONS RESEMBLING ARTIFICIAL COMPOSITIONS.

Some stones are preserved by the curious, for representing distinctly
figures traced by nature alone, and without the aid of art.

Pliny mentions an agate, in which appeared, formed by the hand of
nature, Apollo amidst the Nine Muses holding a harp. At Venice another
may be seen, in which is naturally formed the perfect figure of a man.
At Pisa, in the church of St. John, there is a similar natural
production, which represents an old hermit in a desert, seated by the
side of a stream, and who holds in his hands a small bell, as St.
Anthony is commonly painted. In the temple of St. Sophia, at
Constantinople, there was formerly on a white marble the image of St.
John the Baptist covered with the skin of a camel; with this only
imperfection, that nature had given but one leg. At Ravenna, in the
church of St. Vital, a cordelier is seen on a dusky stone. They found in
Italy a marble, in which a crucifix was so elaborately finished, that
there appeared the nails, the drops of blood, and the wounds, as
perfectly as the most excellent painter could have performed. At
Sneilberg, in Germany, they found in a mine a certain rough metal, on
which was seen the figure of a man, who carried a child on his back. In
Provence they found in a mine a q