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pitch, which had no aromatic smell, and seemed in many respects similar to the produce of the fir-tree. There must undoubtedly therefore have been some other resinous matter mixed with the cedrium.
The pitch of this Mummy was carefully distilled; but gave no other produce, than what might be expected from a resinous body; the caput mortuum, when burned and elixated, yielded a fixed alkali; to this may be attributed the moisture, which the pitch, that was in contact with the spine and those other parts which were most burned, contracted on being broken and exposed to the air; for this pitch had an alkaline taste, and had been more than melted; having been burned to a caput mortuum.
A great variety of experiments were made on this pitchy matter; the result of them all tended to prove, that it had not the lest resemblance to asphaltus; but was certainly a vegetable resinous substance.
Mons. Rouelle, in the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences for 1750, has given us a very elaborate and ingenious treatise on embalming: wherein he has chemically analysed the pitch of six different Mummies.
From his observations; from what Pietro della Valle[1], and Joannes Nardius[2] at the end of his edition of Lucretius, have written on this head; from
