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the skin, bills, and feathers are all unaltered. The 

 magistrates do not permit that any fresh bodies be 

 brought here. The cause of these pheno;nenons are 

 doubtless the dryness of the place where they are laid. 

 It is in vain to seek for any other." 



A repository of nearly the same kind, a late writer 

 informs us is at a monastery, near Palermo, in Sicily. 

 It is a long, subterranean gallery, having niches on 

 every side, between six and seven feet high. In each 

 of these is a human body standing erect, in its usual 

 apparel. The face and the hands are uncovered, and 

 preserve their shape, and natural colour, only a little 

 browner. They are fastened to the wall by the back. 

 Some of them are bc-li'-ved to have been there two or 

 three hundred years. Suppose they couid remain 

 there for ever, what would it profit their former inha* 

 bitants! 



Another traveller gives a fuller account of them. 



u This morning we went to see a celebrated con. 

 Tent of Capuchins, about a mile without the city of 

 Palermo; it contains nothing very remarkable, but 

 the burial-place, which indeed is a great curiosity. 

 This is a vast subterraneous apartment, divided into 

 large commodious galleries, the walls on each side of 

 which are hollowed into a variety of niches, as if in- 

 tended for a great collection of statues : these niches, 

 instead of statues, are all filled with dead bodies, set 

 upright upon their U'gs, and fixed by the back to the 

 inside of a nich. Their number is about three him, 

 dretl ; they are all dressed in the clothes they usually 

 wore, and form a must respectable and venerable as- 

 sembly. The skin and muscles, by a certain prepara- 

 tion, become as dry and hard as a piece of stock^ 

 fish ; and although many of them have been here up- 

 wards of two hundred and fiUy years, yet none aro 

 reduced to skeletons; thuugh the rnusHcs in s >me 

 are more shruuk than in others ; probably 

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