44 NATURAL HISTORY. 



Experiment solitary touching prohibition of putrefaction, 

 and the long conservation of bodies. 



771. It is strange, and well to be noted, how long 

 carcasses have continued uncorrupt, and in their for 

 mer dimensions ; as appeareth in the mummies of 

 Egypt ; having lasted, as is conceived, Csome of them) 

 three thousand years. It is true, they find means to 

 draw forth the brains, and to take forth the entrails, 

 which are the parts aptest to corrupt. But that is 

 nothing to the wonder : for we see what a soft and 

 corruptible substance the flesh of all the other parts 

 of the body is. But it should seem that, according 

 to our observation and axiom in our hundredth ex 

 periment, putrefaction, which we conceive to be so 

 natural a period of bodies, is but an accident ; and 

 that matter maketh not that haste to corruption that 

 is conceived. And therefore bodies in shining amber, 

 in quicksilver, in balms (whereof we now speak), in 

 wax, in honey, in gums, and (it may be) in conserva 

 tories of snow, &c., are preserved very long. It need 

 not go for repetition, if we resume again that which 

 we said in the aforesaid experiments concerning an 

 nihilation ; namely, that if you provide against three 

 causes of putrefaction, bodies will not corrupt : the 

 first is, that the air be excluded ; for that undermineth 

 the body, and conspireth with the spirit of the body to 

 dissolve it. The second is, that the body adjacent and 

 ambient be not commaterial, but merely heterogeneal 

 towards the body that is to be preserved ; for if nothing 

 can be received by the one, nothing can issue from the 

 other ; such are quicksilver and white amber, to herbs 

 and flies, and such bodies. The third is, that the body 



