=Egyptian Embalming.=—The Egyptians embalmed their dead, and the processes which they employed were sufficiently perfect to secure them an indefinite preservation. This is a fact which the pyramids, the cavern, and all the sepultures of Egypt offer us irrefragible proof. But what were the causes of the origin of this custom? We have in answer only hypothesis and conjecture. In the absence of valid documents, each one explains according to the bias of his mind, or the nature of his studies, a usage, the origin of which is lost in the night of time. One of the ancients informs us that the Egyptians took so much pains for the preservation of the body, believing that the soul inhabited it so long as it subsisted. Cassien, on the other hand, assures us that they invented this method because they were unable to bury their dead during the period of inundation. Herodotus, in his third book, observes, that embalming had for its object the securing of bodies from the voracity of animals; they did not bury them, says he, for fear they would be eaten by worms, and they did not burn them, because they considered fire like a wild beast that devours everything it can seize upon. Filial piety and respect for the dead, according to Sicculus, were the sentiments which inspired the Egyptians with the idea of embalming the dead bodies. De Maillet, in his tenth letter upon Egypt, refers only to a religious motive as the origin of embalming: The priests and sages of Egypt taught their fellow citizens that, after a certain number of ages, which they made to amount to thirty or forty thousand years, and at which they fixed the epoch of the grand revolution when the earth would return to the point at which it commenced its existence, their souls would return to the same bodies which they formerly inhabited. But in order to arrive, after death, to this wished for resurrection, two things were absolutely necessary; first that the bodies should be absolutely carefully preserved from corruption, in order that the souls might re-inhabit them; secondly, that the penance submitted to during this long period of years, that the numerous sacrifices founded by the dead, or those offered to their names by their friends, or relation, should expiate the crimes they had committed during the time of their first inhabitation on earth. With these conditions exactly observed, these souls separate from their bodies, should be permitted to re-enter at the arrival of this grand revolution which they anticipated—remember all that had passed during their sojourn, and become immortal like themselves. They had further the same privilege of communicating this same happiness to the animals which they had cherished, provided that their bodies inclosed in the same tomb with themselves, were equally well preserved. It is in virtue of this belief that so many birds, cats, and other animals are found embalmed with almost the same care as the human bodies with which they have been deposited.