6 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 
acteristically undulated along the margins. When I washed 
out the ammonia with water, and added iodine, I found to my 
greatest surprise that the crumbs turned blue just as is the 
ease with modern starch. When I noted this I exclaimed: 
Well, indeed, then does starch deserve its name, meaning 
strength, and most wonderfully has it retained that property 
for more than 4000 years. 
Besides these cereals there were also found lentils, dates, 
Acacia seeds, the fruits of the Doum-palm, Hyphaene 
thebaica, etc. 
About 1860 the Austrian botanist, Prof. Unger, conceived 
the brilliant idea of exaniining the unburnt bricks mixed with 
hashed straw of ancient Egyptian buildings. He dissolved 
them in water and by that means found many barley, wheat 
and small seeds as well as straw, etc.* The best brief ac- 
count of Egyptian vegetable relics was given by Alex. Braun 
in a lecture before the Berlin Anthropological Society, pub- 
lished by his pupils, Ascherson and Magnus, in;‘‘ Zeitschrift 
fiir Ethnologie, Berlin,’’ IX (1877), p. 289. 
In our day Schweinfurtht has published new researches 
and has collected quite a number of new specimens other than 
grain, especially vegetable ornaments of the mummies. Often 
a wreath is found hung round the neck or lying on the 
breast of the mummy. This wreath is made in a peculiar 
manner. A strip of a palm leaf was taken and the single 
leaves of flowers, especially of the blue water lily, were strung 
on this strip so that the leaves hung down like the individual 
parts of many modern necklaces. 
I may add that subsequently the ancient Egyptians did not 
take real bread for their mummies, but made the bread of 
burnt clay or marble. We find also epitaphs in marble on 
which different forms of bread are represented, also fruits, a 
roasted goose, etc. They must therefore have arrived at the 
conception that this was only a symbol. 
- * Unger in Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, 
Math.-Naturw. Cl., bd. 45, abth. II, p. 75; bd. 54, abth. I, p. 33. 
- + Schweinfurth, Pflanzenreste aus alt-aegyptischen Gribern. Berichte 
der deutschen botanischen Gesellschaft, Berlin, 1884, p. 357. 
