?), and sprinkled them
with a powder made of the dust of decayed pine trees, and a sort of
brushwood which the Spaniards call Brefsos, together with the powder
of pumice stone. Then they let the body remain till it was perfectly
dry, when the relatives of the deceased came and swaddled it in sheep
or goat skins dressed. Girding all tight with long leather thongs,
they put it in the cave which had been set apart by the deceased for
his burying place, without any covering. There were particular persons
set apart for this office of embalming, each sex performing it for
those of their own. During the process they watched the bodies very
carefully to prevent the ravens from devouring them, the relations of
the deceased bringing them victuals and waiting on them during the
time of their watching.'"]

So complete is the desiccation of these mummies, that a whole body,
which Blumenbach possessed, weighed only 7.5 lb, though the dried
skeleton of a body of the same size, as usually prepared, weighs at
least 9 lb.

In some situations the conditions of the soil and atmosphere, by the
rapidity with which they permit the drying of the animal tissues to be
effected, are alone sufficient for the preservation of the body in the
form of a mummy; this is the case in some parts of Peru, especially at
Arica, where considerable numbers of bodies have been found quite dry
in pits dug in a saline dry soil. There is an excellent specimen of a
mummy of this kind in the Museum of the College of Surgeons, which was
brought from Caxamarca by General Paroissien--like most of them, it is
in a sitting posture, with the knees almost touching the chin, and the
hands by the sides of the face. It is quite dry and hard; the features
are distorted, but nearly perfect, and the hair has fallen off. The
Peruvian mummies do not appear to have been subjected to any
particular preparation, the dry and absorbent earth in which they are
placed being sufficient to prevent them from putrefying. M. Humboldt
found the bodies of many Spaniards and Peruvians lying on former
fields of battle dried and preserved in the open air. In the deserts
of Africa the preservation of the body is secured by burying it in the
hot sand; and even in Europe soils are sometimes met with in which the
bodies undergo a slow process of drying, and then remain almost
unalterable even on exposure to the air and moisture. There is a vault
at Toulouse in which a vast number of bodies that have