Nov., 1904.] 



KNOWLEDGE & SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



261 



the wall of an adjacent chapel, the ancient Oratory of 

 S. Michael — a grim and ghastly company. From 

 waist to knee they are clad in a decorous white kilt or 

 loin-cloth, the ecclesiastics being somewhat grotesquely 

 distinguished by liirettas. Rosaries are still clutched 

 in some of the poor desiccated fingers ; the hands of 

 one arc clasped over his bre\ iary. Women as well as 

 men are there ; the erstwhile notion that cmly the male 

 sex were susceptible of mummification having been 

 exploded by the discovery in 1826 of a very perfect 

 female subject, who had died of typhuS in 1816. The 

 smaller number of female mummies is doubliess due 

 to the fact that these tombs were usually reserved for 

 priests and persons of distinction in the comnumity. 



It is notable that the phenomenon occurs not only 

 in the parish church, but also in the Chapel of S. 

 Catherine, a little to the east of \'enzone, where is one 

 tomb in which the remains become completely trans- 

 formed, and where the body of Don Felice Tavoschi of 

 Tolmezzo, the well-lo\ed pastor of Venzoiie, who 

 succumbed to cholera in 1855, is preserved to this day 

 by the affection of his people. .At Ospcdaletto, too, 

 three miles nearer Gcmona, five similar tombs aie 

 known to exist in the ancient I'riory of the Santo 

 Spirito. And animal remains, in a perfect state of 

 desiccation, have been picked up upon the plain of 

 Portis, three miles above \'enzone, on the road to 

 Tolmezzo ; so that it would appear as though for a 

 radius of some six miles round W-iizone, human :md 

 other animal remains, buried in the earth, or more 

 particularly in the tombs of the churches, are in this 

 singular manner more or less frequently converted into 

 mummies. 



The phenomenon has naturally gi\en rise to much 

 scientific discussion, though it appears still to be an 

 unsolved problem. The latest writer, Dr. Pare (1S70), 

 exclaims with pardonable sarcasm that " had such a 

 rare phenomenon occurred within ig Italian miles of 

 Paris instead of Udinc, the French .Academy would 

 have appropriated it, would have subjected it to most 

 searching examination, and would have published 

 monographs of Atlantean magnitude, which, in pro- 

 portion as they rose in price, would be treasined in the 

 most illustrious libraries." 



Dr. Ciconi in 1829 suggested that the desiccating 

 agent might be the calcium sulphate, which, in a more 

 or less anhydrous form, and mixed with calcium 

 carbonate, constitutes the soil of Vcnzone and Ospeda- 

 letto. This comes from the limestone debris of the 

 Carnic Alps brought down by the Fella and the Taglia- 

 mento. He points out that anhydrous sulphate of 

 lime, which absorbs water avidly, was the principal 

 substance used by Hunter in his celebrated [)rocess for 

 preserving the human subject, and suggests that the 

 imperfect desiccation occurring in some of the tombs 

 would be due to their ha\ing been excavated abo\e or 

 below the beneficent layer. Marcolini in 1S31 put for- 

 ward a hypothesis that the acidification of the soil by 

 hydro-carbo-phosphatcs might be the cause owing to 

 which the natural processes of corruption were in- 

 hibited. Stringer! maintained the same idea a decade 

 later. But Dr. Zecchini in 1861, and Dr. Pare (Direc- 

 tor of the Hospital at Udine) in 186S-70, independently 

 brought forward the theory that the desiccation was 

 produced by a parasitic mould, TJypha bnmbastica Fcrs, 

 which absorbs the aqueous humours of the body, and 

 induces mummification. This mould is invariably pre- 

 sent on the surface of the mummies, covering them 

 here and there, in greater or less profusion, and per- 

 sisting for a long while after their exhumation and 



exposure. Hul Ijy previous observers it had been re- 

 garded as the cjli-ct and not as the cause of the 

 phenomenon. It is ;i micioscopic parasite, composed 

 ol white fungoid tlocculi, aTialogous to the Hotrytiis or 

 parasitic fungus that produces " calciiio " in the silk- 

 worm. In 1870, Dr. Pare made a series of experiments 

 in which he succeeded, bv sprinkling various animal 

 remains with Hy[)ha from the X'enzoiie mummies, iii 

 oljtaining successful preser\ ations of IVogs, eels, antl 

 cats; while, on the contrary, he failed with lishes 

 (apparently on accoimt of the scales), and with a (.V-:n\ 

 lamb (perhaps because the Hypha, nourishing itsell 

 upon the fatty humours of the wool, was luiabie to 

 attack the body before it underv\eiit decomposition). 

 He explains the successes and failures in tlic Iniinan 

 subject by the conflict between the Hypha nr pirserx.i- 

 tive agent and the processes of ck'comjxjsition, the one 

 or the other predominating according to circumstances. 

 It is obvious Iroin his experiments that the phenomenon 

 is common to all animal remains, and is |jv no means 

 peculiar to the human l)od\. 



Other similar mumjiiies ha\e been lound in the 

 Cathedral of Tolouse, in the Church of S. Michael 

 in Dublin, and in the .'mcient Servitc Monastery 

 of Monte-all-Croce near Uonii ; lint tlicv are less per- 

 fect than those of Venzone. A par.illel has also been 

 sought in the mummies found in the burning sands of 

 .\r;ibia, but at Venzone the phenomenon cannot be due 

 to heat, as the temperature of the tombs is very low. 

 Nor is it produced by the action of cold, otherwise the 

 mummies would decompose at the lem[)erature of the 

 air, like those of the Arctic Regions. The\' arc im- 

 pervious to the action of air, and e\en of water ; while 

 the desiccating and preservative agent is able to resist 

 even such potent forces as the putrefactive processes 

 of typhoid fever. 



Note. — The probable action of a parasitic finit^us upon the 

 "Venzone Mummies" is borne out bj' Mr. Massie's article in 

 ■' Knowledge " for October, 1904, in which he mentions the 

 Hutrytus, by which the silk-worm is completely desiccated, or 

 calcified —a too-familiar phenomenon in the silk-worm districts 

 of Italy — and otiier forms of " nuimmifyin^' " fungi. 



Further information as to the probable cause of the plinio- 

 menon at Venzone would be welcomed by the writer, wlio 

 failed, during a prolonged stay at Udine last year, to obtain 

 any reliable scientific explanation of it. 



Explosion of Starrs. 



By Pkoiessor A. W. BickeI'ITo.n'. 



Do stars explode? Are the oljservers of Lick and 

 V'erkes correct when they said that Nova I'ersei had 

 become a nebula that was expanding at such a rate 

 that no theory of its origin was tenable, but that a 

 star had exploded, been converted into gas, and blown 

 at a velocity of thousands of miles a second to spread 

 itself throughout the entire universe? 



Is it conceivable, with the known laws of matter and 

 energy, that a force can be generated great enough 

 to blow a star to pieces? A calculation shows that 

 were the entire star an explosive, it would have to 1)(; 

 a score of thousands of times stronger than dynamite. 

 Is there in Nature anything in which such a store of 

 energy exists? This tjuestion must imdoubtedly be 

 answered in the affirmative, and the source of the 

 energy is the attractive force of gravitation. The force 

 with which the sun attracts matter, and the enormous 



