282 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



the cinders of Vesuvius in Pompeii, and sealed up in the 

 lava that flowed over Herculaneum. Bread, Avine, fruits, 

 and other domestic articles, including several luxuries of 

 the toilet, such as pomades or pomade-pots, and rouge 

 for painting ladies' faces, but no soap for washing them. 

 In the British Museum is a large variety of household 

 requirements found in the pyramids of Egypt, but there is 

 no soap, and we have not heard of any having been dis- 

 covered there. 



Finding no traces of soap among the Romans, Greeks, or 

 Egyptians, we need not go back to the pre-historic ''cave 

 men," whose flint and bone implements were found embed- 

 ded side by side with the remains of the mammoth bear and 

 hyena in such caverns as that at Torquay, where Mr. Pen- 

 gelly has, during the last eighteen years, so industriously 

 explored. 



All our knowledge, and that still larger quantity, our 

 ignorance, of the habits of antique savages, indicate that 

 solid soap, such as we commonly use, is a comparatively 

 modern luxury; but it does not follow that they had no 

 substitute. To learn what that substitute may probably 

 have been we may observe the habits of modern savages, or 

 primitive people at home and abroad. 



This will teach us that clay, especially where it is found 

 having some of the unctuous properties of fuller's-earth, is 

 freely used for lavatory purposes, and was probably used by 

 the Romans, who were by no means remarkable for any- 

 thing approaching to true refinement. They were essen- 

 tially a nasty people, the habits of the poor being "cheap 

 and nasty;" of the rich, luxurious and nasty. The Roman 

 nobleman did not sit down to dinner, but sprawled with 

 his face downwards, and took his food as modern swine take 

 theirs. At grand banquets, after gorging to repletion, he 

 tickled his throat in order to vomit and make room for 

 more. He took baths occasionally, and was probably scoured 

 and shampooed as well as oiled, but it is doubtful whether 

 he performed any intermediate domestic ablutions worth 

 naming. 



A refinement upon washing with clay is to be found in 

 the practice once common in England, and.still largely used 



