SIO 
Dr. Granville's essay on 
sidering, or the neglecting to regulate the lire in using the 
wax and bitumen, would necessarily give rise to the latter 
results, which the covering bandages were sure to hide from 
the eye of the surviving relatives to whom the body was to 
be returned. It is also fair to presume, that inability or un- 
willingness on the part of friends and relatives to pay for 
the ingredients or for the labour necessary to carry on the 
operations just described, have, on many occasions, been the 
cause of mummies being prepared in that imperfect manner 
which has been noticed in so many instances. 
E. When the body was taken out of the warm liquid mix- 
ture, every part of it must have been in a very soft and sup- 
ple condition, wholly unsusceptible of putrefaction. The 
next steps therefore to be taken, with a view to convert it 
into a perfect mummy, must have been those, which, had 
they been taken before that part of the process that has been 
just described, would have exposed the body to inevitable 
putrefaction, in a climate like that of Egypt. I allude to the 
tanning of the integuments, and the exposing of their sur-' 
face to the additional influence of those salts, the presence of 
which, as well as that of tannin, I have most clearly de- 
monstrated. 
Whether an infusion of the vegetable astringent employed 
for tanning the integuments was had recourse to in the 
first instance, and the immersion of the body into the con- 
centrated water of the natron lakes followed, or whether the 
tanning liquid was itself made by infusing the vegetable as- 
tringents themselves in the water of the natron lakes, and the 
body then immersed into it, are questions, which it is neither 
possible, nor important to decide ; the body was unquestion- 
