68 THE STORY-BOOK OF SCIENCE 



"Flax is a slender plant with little delicate blue 

 flowers, and is sown and harvested every year. It 

 is much cultivated in Northern France, Belgium, and 

 Holland. Jt is the first plant used by man for woven 

 fabrics. Mummies of Egypt, the old 

 land of Moses and the patriarchs, mum- 

 mies which have lain buried four thou- 

 sand years and more, are swathed in 

 bands of linen. " 



"Mummies, did you say?" interposed 

 [Jules. "I don't know what they are." 

 "I will tell you, my dear child. Re- 

 spect for the dead is found among 

 and in all ages. Man regards as 

 sacred what was the seat of a soul made in the 

 image of God; he honors the dead, but the honors 

 rendered differ according to time, place, cus- 

 toms. We inter the dead and put over the burial 

 place a tombstone with an inscription, or at least a 

 humble cross, divine emblem of life eternal. The 

 ancients burned them on a funeral pile ; they piously 

 gathered the bones bleached by the fire and inclosed 

 them in priceless vases. In Egypt, to preserve the 

 cherished remains for the family, they embalmed the 

 dead; that is to say, they impregnated them with 

 aromatics and swathed them in linen to prevent de- 

 composition. These pious duties were so delicately 

 performed that, after centuries and centuries, we 

 find intact in their chests of sweet-smelling wood, but 

 dried and blackened by years, contemporaries of the 

 ancient kings of Egypt, or the Pharaohs. These 

 are what are called mummies. 



