THE STANDARD DICTIONARY <>F FACTS 



very appropriately to denote the privation of 

 life; white is an emblem of purity; yellow is 

 the color of leaves when they fall, and represents 

 that death is the end of all human hopes, etc. 

 In the East, to cut the hair was considered a 

 sign of mourning; among the Romans, on the 

 contrary, it was deemed a mark of sorrow to let 

 row. The duration of mourning varies in 

 different countries, being always longer in pro- 

 port ion' to the nearness of relationship. Among 

 the ancients, as among the moderns, public | 

 mournings were common on the death of a dis- 

 tinguished public benefactor; and with the 

 a and Romans it was the custom, during 

 U-d for mourning, to lay aside 

 all ornaments of dress, to abstain from the bath 

 and other indulges 



Mummies. Dead human bodies em- 

 balmed and dried after the manner of those 

 taken from Egyptian tombs. An immense num- 

 ber of mummies have been found in Egypt, 

 consisting not only of human bodies, but of 

 various animals, as bulls, apes, ibises, crocodiles, 

 fish, etc The processes for the preservation of 

 the body were very various. Those of the poorer 

 classes were merely dried by salt or natron, and 

 wrapped up in coarse cloths and deposited in 



the catacombs. The bodies of the rich and the 

 great underwent the most complicated opera- 

 tions, and were laboriously adorned witli all 

 kinds of ornaments. Embalmers of different 

 ranks and duties extracted the brain through 

 the nostrils, and the entrails through an incision 

 in the side; the body was then shaved, washed, 

 and salted, and after a certain period the process 

 of embalming, properly speaking, began. The 

 whole body was then* steeped in balsam and 

 wrapped up in linen bandages; each finger and 

 toe was separately enveloped, or sometimes 

 sheathed in a gold case, and the nails were often 

 gilded. The bandages were then folded round 

 each of the limbs, and finally round the whole 

 body, to the number of fifteen to twenty thick- 

 nesses. The head was the object of particular 

 attention ; it was sometimes enveloped in several 

 folds of fine muslin; the first was glued to the 

 skin, and the others to the first; the whole was 

 then coated with a fine plaster. The Persians, 

 Assyrians, Hebrews, and Romans had all pro- 

 cesses of embalming, though not so lasting as 

 that of Egypt. The art also was practiced by 

 the Guanches of the Canaries, the Mexicans, 

 Peruvians, etc. Natural mummies are fre- 

 quently found preserved by thedryness of the air. 



NAVIES OF THE WORLD 



Newspaper. Newspapers first came into 

 existence when the reports of the Roman im- 

 perial army were transmitted to the generals in 

 all parts of the country, but for the actual news- 

 paper we are indebted to Germany, where in 

 Augsburg, Vienna, Ratisbon, and Nuremburg, it 

 was, early in the Fifteenth Century, the practice 

 to issue news sheets in the form of letters. Yet 

 the first newspaper that at all covered the same 

 idea as those of the present day, was issued in 

 Venice, by order of the Venetian Government in 

 1566, and called the Notizie Scritte. At first 



they were not printed, but written out, and 

 hung up in various public places, where the peo- 

 ple could read them on payment of a small coin. 

 The first actual English newspaper was the 

 Weekly News of 1622, edited and published by 

 Nathaniel Butler. The London Weekly Courant 

 came out in the same year. The first daily paper 

 was the Daily Courant, which appeared printed 

 on one side only, in 1702. ' The first newspaper 

 published in America was Publick Occurrences 

 (1690), followed in 1704 by the Boston News- 

 Letter and the Boston Gazette. 



