406 NATURAL HISTORY. 



S. Macario in Egypt, a plant which is long, leafless, 

 brown of colour, and branched like coral, save that 

 it closeth at the top. This being set in water within 

 a house, spreadeth and displayeth strangely ; and the 

 people thereabout have a superstitious belief, that 

 in the labour of women it helpeth to the easy de 

 liverance. 



Experiment solitary touching the materials of glass. 



770. The crystalline Venice glass is reported to 

 be a mixture in equal portions of stones brought 

 from Pavia by the river Ticinum, and the ashes of a 

 weed, called by the Arabs kal, which is gathered in 

 a desart between Alexandria and Rosetta ; and is 

 by the Egyptians used first for fuel ; and then they 

 crush the ashes into lumps like a stone, and so sell 

 them to the Venetians for their glass-works. 



Experiment solitary touching prohibition of putrefaction y 

 and the long conservation of bodies. 



111. It is strange, and well to be noted, how 

 long carcases have continued uncorrupt, and in their 

 former dimensions, as appeareth in the mummies of 

 Egypt; having lasted, as is conceived, some 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 experi- 



