the rapid running
causing the brands to throw out long streamers of flames over the hands
and arms of the dancers. The latter apply the brands to their own nude
bodies and to the bodies of their comrades in front. A warrior will
seize the flaming mass as if it were a sponge, and, keeping close to
the man he is pursuing, will rub his back with it as if bathing him.
The sufferer in turn catches up with the man in front of him and bathes
him in flame. From time to time the dancers sponge their own backs
with the flaming brands. When a brand is so far consumed that it can no
longer be held it is dropped and the dancers disappear from the corral.
The spectators pick up the flaming bunches thus dropped and bathe their
own hands in the fire.

"No satisfactory explanation seems to be obtainable as to the means by
which the dancers in this extraordinary performance are able to escape
injury. Apparently they do not suffer from any burns. Doubtless some
protection is afforded by the earth that is applied to their bodies."

Spontaneous combustion of the human body, although doubted by the
medical men of this day, has for many years been the subject of much
discussion; only a few years ago, among the writers on this subject,
there were as many credulous as there were skeptics. There is,
however, no reliable evidence to support the belief in the spontaneous
combustion of the body. A few apochryphal cases only have been
recorded. The opinion that the tissues of drunkards might be so
saturated with alcohol as to render the body combustible is disproved
by the simple experiment of placing flesh in spirits for a long time
and then trying to burn it. Liebig and others found that flesh soaked
in alcohol would burn only until the alcohol was consumed. That various
substances ignite spontaneously is explained by chemic phenomena, the
conditions of which do not exist in the human frame. Watkins in
speaking of the inflammability of the human body remarks that on one
occasion he tried to consume the body of a pirate given to him by a U.
S. Marshal. He built a rousing fire and piled wood on all night, and
had not got the body consumed by the forenoon of the following day.
Quite a feasible reason for supposed spontaneous human combustion is to
be found in several cases quoted by Taylor, in which persons falling
asleep, possibly near a fire, have been accidentally ignited, and
becoming first stupefied by the smoke, and then suffocated, have be