Modern toys of acrobats are made to perform evolutions by the use of quicksilver. Dædalus, the famous Greek figure-maker, who is said to have lived about a thousand years before Christ, introduced quicksilver into a wooden image of Venus, thereby lending to it a sort of Chinese tumbling motion.—Dr. Doran.
Saffron as a Perfume.
It seems a little odd to us that the ancients used saffron as a perfume. Not only were halls, theatres and courts strewn with the plant, but it entered into the composition of many spirituous extracts, which retained the scent. These costly smelling waters were often made to flow in small streams, which spread abroad their much admired odor. Luxurious people even moistened with them all those things with which they were desirous of surprising their guests in an agreeable manner, or with which they ornamented their appartment. From saffron, with the addition of wax and other ingredients, the Greeks and Romans prepared scented salves.
Spontaneous Combustion.
In Levoux's "Journal de Medicine" is an account of a very fat woman, twenty-eight years of age, who was found on fire in her chamber, where nothing else was burning. The neighbors heard a noise of something like frying, and when the body was removed it left a layer of black grease. The doctor conceived that the combustion began in the internal parts, and that the clothes were burned secondarily.
Egyptian Perfumes.
So perfect were the Egyptians in the manufacture of perfumes, that some of their ancient ointment, preserved in an alabaster vase in the museum at Alnwick, still retains a very powerful odor, though it must be almost three thousand years old.
Magic Rain Stone.
The Indian magi, who are to invoke Yo He Wah, and meditate with the supreme holy fire that he may give seasonable rains, have a transparent stone of supposed great power in assisting to bring down the rain when it is put in a basin of water. It is reputed to possess divine virtue; it would suffer decay, they assert, were it even seen by their own laity; but if by foreigners, it would be utterly despoiled of its divine communicative power.