ng its mummification, was placed in stoves of a certain
temperature, where the heat gradually and closely united the various
preservative agents before mentioned. They were then swathed in linen
bandages of great length, and enclosed in beautifully painted and
gilded cartonages; the faces were heavily gilded and the eyes imitated
in enamel; they were then inclosed in three or four cases, also richly
gilded and painted, and finally "mounted" in a sarcophagus.

Common people appear in some cases to have been merely salted and
plunged in liquid pitch, others were simply salted and dried. Mummies
prepared by these methods freely attract moisture--are ill preserved,
and, therefore, as a matter of course, fall to pieces easily on
contact with external air.

In summing up the process of embalming, as described by the authors
just quoted, we find a few problems of more or less difficulty, and
which none of them appear inclined to solve; and I do not wonder at
this, as the attempt, in my own case, in one or two instances, has
involved days of study and references to dozens of medical and other
works with but a meagre result. However, to take them seriatim, we can
assume, I think, with some show of evidence, that the Ethiopian stone,
mentioned as being used to make the first incision in the corpse,
might have been a piece of obsidian or basalt, but most probably was
merely an ordinary sharp flint of a dark colour.

The first chemical used in embalming is the hardest nut of all to
crack, and on which I have most exercised my intellectual teeth--and
that is natron. Now, what is natron? [Footnote: Natrium is the old
Latin term for the metal or base we now call sodium. The old names for
some of its salts were: Natron Carbonicum--or Bicarbonate of Soda;
Natron Vitriolatum--or Sulphate of Soda; discovered or re-discovered
about 1670. Nitrum =Carbonate of soda.] Ordinary dictionaries and
authors tell us, as a matter of course--carbonate of soda. In support
of this theory M. Rouyer writes:

"The natron would be used just as it was got from many of the lakes of
Egypt, where it is found abundantly in the form of carbonate of soda."

Pereira, in "Materia Medica," though intimating that natron is not to
be confounded with nitre, says, in speaking of carbonate of soda:

"This salt was probably known to the ancients under the term of
Nitron."

Now, as Nitron is more likely, from its etymology, to be translated
"nitre," we are landed in