Antiseptic Properties of So it — National Library. 2>1S 



liad assumed a most singular form, one of which had be- 

 longed to an Indian of Cuzco, the other to a native of the Chin- 

 cha tribe, who reside between Pisco and Canete. I was also 

 shown on the same occasion a female skull in such excellent 

 preservation, that one could still easily perceive the expression 

 of the face. This was the skull of a half-breed Indian woman, 

 named Maria Palacel, aged 25, who had died in the hospital 

 of Santa Anna, 27th Sept. 1856, of dysentery, and on 1st 

 March, 1859, nearly two and a half years later, had been dis- 

 interred in a state of complete preservation. Nature had in 

 this case taken on herself the process of embalming, and had, 

 owing to the dryness of the atmosphere, and the quantity of 

 saline matter in the soil, secured results which in Eurojje 

 could only have been obtained artificially and at a consider- 

 able expense. 



Adjoining the Escuela de Medecina is the National Library, 

 a large building containing some 30,000 volumes, treating of 

 every department of human knowledge, but which, owing to 

 want of means, has of late years received hardly any ac- 

 cession. The librarian is Don Francisco de Paula Vigil, 

 a highly intelligent and liberal-minded priest and man of 

 the world, who had been excommunicated by Pio Nono on 

 account of his learned work, '' Defence of the Principles of 

 Secular Authority against the Pretensions of the Holy See." 

 Nothing daunted by the fulmination of this penalty, the ex- 

 cellent old gentleman is prosecuting his researches yet fur- 

 ther, and is energetically defending his principles ; and what 



