Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (191 5), No. 10. 63 



During this operation, other embalmers repeatedly 

 smeared the body with a kind of ointment, prepared by 

 mixing certain fats, with powdered odoriferous plants, 

 resin, pumice stone and absorbent substances (p. 139). 



As in Egypt, according to Herodotus and Diodorus, — 

 and my own observations have verified their account, at 

 any rate so far as its chief feature is concerned — there 

 was another method of embalming in which no abdominal 

 incision was made, unless it was per rectum. 



When this cheaper method was employed the corpse 

 was dried in the sun and some corrosive liquid, called 

 " cedria " in the case of the Egyptians, but in that of the 

 Guanches supposed by Dr. Parcelly to be Euphorbia 

 juice, was injected for the purpose of dissolving the 

 intestines and thus facilitating the process of preservation 

 by removing the chief seat of decomposition. 



[It is important to recall the fact, to which I have 

 already referred in this account, that in the islands of the 

 Torres Straits also the same two alternative methods of 

 evisceration, either through a flank incision or per rectum 

 were in use.] 



Most mummies, wrapped in goat skins, were buried 

 in caves. But those of kings and princes were placed in 

 coffins cut out of a solid log, and buried (head north) in 

 the open, a monument of pyramidal form being erected 

 above them. 



It is important to bear in mind that both in East and 

 West Africa and in the Canary Islands the technical pro- 

 cedures in the practice of mummification are those which 

 were not adopted in Egypt until the time of the XX 1st 

 Dynasty. I have already called attention to this fact in 

 my references to the Torres Straits mummies {vide supra\ 

 and to the inference that these extensive migrations of 

 Egyptian influence could not have begun before the ninth 

 century B.C. 



