Note 136 — Chapter III
Edward Rehatsek translation
“That a salamander is able to live in flames,” says Sir Thomas Browne, “to endure and put out fire, is an assertion not only of great antiquity but confirmed by frequent and not contemptible authority.… All which notwithstanding, there is on the negative authority and experience.… The ground of this opinion might be some sensible resistance of fire observed in the salamander; which being, as Galen determineth, cold in the fourth and moist in the third degree, and having also a mucus humidity above and under the skin, by virtue thereof it may a while endure flame, which being consumed it can resist no more.”—Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors, ch. xiv.