The same author points out another inaccuracy, in what Herodotus has taught us on the bandages of the mummies. Very few mummies, says he, are enveloped agreeably to the description of Herodotus, that is to say, the linen bandages are not glued together with gum alone, applied directly to the body when simply dried without any resinous substances. Such kind of embalming is the least costly, although Herodotus describes it as the richest and dearest. The mummy preserved in the cabinet of St. Geneviève, and the two which are in that of the Celestins, may throw some new light on this passage of Herodotus, and confirm my conjectures. These mummies have two kinds of bandages; the body and the limbs are each separately invested with linen bandages, endued with resin or bitumen, and they are so intimately united together that they form but one mass. This is doubtless the reason that some authors have believed that this thickness was only embalmed flesh. There are other linen bandages without any bituminous substance, which envelope the whole body; both the arms are crossed upon the stomach, and the legs are glued together; these mummies are swaddled in new bandages, or, if you please, by this last bandage, just as infants are swaddled; these bandages are yellow, particularly those of the mummy of the cabinet of Saint Geneviève, and are absolutely destitute of resinous substance. We may, then, readily conclude, that these bandages have been only simply invested with gum. It appears that Herodotus had forgotten to describe the use of the first bandage, employed to retain the resinous matter on the surface of the body, and having probably seen among the embalmers, or elsewhere, some bodies swaddled like infants, he only described the second bandage. If we examine with attention, the mummy of Saint Geneviève, and those of the cabinet of the Celestins, it will be perceived that the second bandage is equally a suit of ordinary embalming; for the mummy of the Celestins, of which the first bandage has been removed, no doubt in order to see the process of embalming, has the bands of the first bandage of a very clear and coarse linen: the bands of that of Saint Geneviève, on the contrary, are much finer, whilst the substances of the embalming of the two mummies are the same. I am persuaded that mummies seldom come to us with the second bandage, and that the preservation of those of the mummies of the cabinet of Saint Geneviève, and of the Celestins, is only due to the state of the cases which hold them, or to the peculiar care of those who sent them.