Chemistry, Zoology, and Geology in Egypt. 341 



phyry and granite, shows that they had the use of very sharp 

 instruments, and that they consequently were well acquainted 

 with the art of tempering. Very little iron, it is true, has 

 been found in their cities and tombs ; but this depends upon 

 the circumstance that that metal is easily destroyed. Besides, 

 various other metals have been found in them, and, among 

 others, bronze, and'gold of great purity. They were acquainted 

 with all our enamels and porcelains ; they knew how to make 

 up the most brilliant and the most solid colours, and even ul- 

 tramarine; in a word, they were infinitely more advanced in the 

 chemical arts than the Greeks and Romans ever were. 



We have said that the habit of rearing sacred animals in the 

 temples, would have enabled the Egyptians to study the man- 

 ners of these animals, and to observe their forms with care ; 

 and, accordingly, they reproduced them with perfect fidelity in 

 painting and in sculpture. We find on their monuments more 

 than fifty species of animals, so recognisable, that even when the 

 figures are of small dimensions and merely given in oudine, it 

 is impossible to mistake them. Thus we distinguish in their 

 sculptures the great antelope, the oryx, the giraffe, the large- 

 eared hare, the sparrow-hawk, the vulture, the Egyptian goose, 

 the quail, the lapwing, the ibis, &c. Gau, in his work on 

 Nubia, has given a copy of a painting which represents the 

 triumph of an Egyptian monarch. There are seen in it the 

 different nations offering to the conqueror animals pecuhar to 

 their respective countries. There are distinguished in it the 

 hunting-tiger, an animal which we have only known in Europe 

 for about thirty years back, the aspic, coluber haje., the crocodile, 

 &c. Although in these representations the zoological characters 

 have not been expressed, yet the general aspect is so well ex- 

 hibited, that a naturalist can always readily make out the ani- 

 mal, even in the case of insects and fishes. In a painting brought 

 to France by M. Caillaud, and which represents people fishing, 

 there occur more than twenty distinct species of fishes ; slluri, 

 cyprini, and other species of singular form and peculiar to 

 Egypt, all so faithfully expressed, that one can recognize them 

 at first sight. 



It cannot be imagined that a nation which devoted itself with 

 so much perseverance and success to the obsenation of nature, 



