— 19 — 
wound in a circular manner round the finger or toe, so that when 
the epidermis peels off it may not carry the nails with it. The 
impressions le£t by thèse pièces of string are visible in ahnost ail 
cases, and it often happens that the string is left in position on 
one or two fingers or toes. In most cases, however, the string is 
removed after the body has been taken ont o£ the salt-tank. In 
Pl. XI there is shown a photograph o£ the fingers o£ one o£ thèse 
mummies exhibiting the impressions le£t by the string (figure 4) 
and the string is shown in situ on two toes o£ the £oot in figure 5. 
In the latter the sharply eut edge o£ the cuticle is visible on the 
great toe, the epidermis £onning a thimble, which has been eut 
with a knif'e and le£t in position to avoid the risk o£ pnlling off 
the nail when the rest o£ the epidermis peels off. 
The packing- of the limbs. 
While the body is in the saline solution the skin and the lining 
o£ the body cavity become toughened by the action o£ the sait ; 
but the soft tissues under the skin in the limbs, back and neck 
are not exposed to the action o£ the preservative agent and soon 
become reduced to a so£t pulpy mass, which is o£ a fluid or 
semifluid consistency. It was the practice of the embalmers in 
the time of the 21st dynasty to stuff into this pulpy mass large 
quantities of foreign materials so as to restore to the collapsed 
and shrunken members some semblance of the form and consist- 
ency they possessed during life. 
The hand (armed perhaps with some instrument such as that 
used for removing the brain) was passed through the opening (X) 
in the left flank into the body cavity (along the Unes Y Y in 
figure 3) and a channel was forced downward into each thigh (U). 
This channel was an extensive cavity passing in front of the hip 
bone (os innominatum) and thigh bone (fémur) and bounded in 
