ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 187 



the precise age of the mummy from which they were taken, 

 especially as Mr. Pettigrew was present, and would, he hoped, 

 favour the meeting with his opinions on the subject. 



Mr. Pettigrew. — I don't know that I have any thing to 

 say on the subject, in addition to what Mr. Hope has just told 

 you; but as he has so pointedly called on me, I will just men- 

 tion, that the date of the commencement and termination of 

 the practice of embalming is involved in so much obscurity, 

 and extends over so considerable a range of time, that I feel 

 great difficulty in assigning an exact age to any individual 

 mummy. I consider, however, the skull, from which the 

 Necrobice and Dermestides have been taken, to be Grasco- 

 iEgyptian, or Pharaonic ; it was brought by Mr. Wilkinson, 

 the celebrated Egyptian traveller, who is now present, 

 from Thebes. I may observe, however, the practice of 

 embalming was continued as late as the fifth century. As I 

 have this opportunity, I will call your attention to a breast- 

 plate, which I hold in my hand, with a representation of a 

 Copris; it was purchased by Belzoni of an Arab who had 

 taken it from the breast of a mummy ; it is of basalt, and 

 carved in alto-relievo. On one side of the Copris is a repre- 

 sentation of Isis ; on the other, of Osiris ; and on the reverse 

 are numerous hieroglyphics. Here is another of the same 

 kind of breast-plate, but composed of common pottery instead 

 of basalt ; it was purchased by Mr. Rogers the poet ; it bears, 

 like the other, figures of Isis and Osiris, and has also hiero- 

 glyphics on the back. I have compared both these with a 

 small tablet of basalt in the British Museum, and have found 

 the figures in all respects the same. I may remark, that the 

 insects exhibited to-night by Mr. Hope, were found in the 

 occipital foramen of the skull. In a skull I have lately 

 examined, there was not the slightest trace of insects, or even 

 of brain ; it was perfectly clean ; the whole of the brain had 

 been extracted through the left nostril. In another head I 

 found the skull had been fractured ; this was evidently the 

 head of a priest. I do not pretend to say how he could come 

 by such rough usage : lie had survived this fracture for years ; 

 nature had performed a complete cure, by the formation of a 

 layer, or ridge of new bone, along the edges of the fracture, 

 which had firmly united the parts thus unnaturally separated. 

 The cavity of this priest's skull, also, was perfectly clean ; not 



