state of preservation, was found ten feet below the surface of a bog, on the lands of Gallagh, near Castle Blakeney, county Galway. The head, legs, and feet were bare, but the body was covered with a deer-skin tunic reaching to the knees and half-way down the arms; in front it was laced and fastened by thongs of the same material. The mantle was, unfortunately, much injured in the disinterment, but a few fragments of it still hung together; portions of the seams sewed with fine gut of three strands still remained; “the regularity and closeness of the stitches are most remarkable, as shown by the accompanying cut, in which a portion of one of the joinings is represented double the natural size. This closure was effected by what is termed the looped stitch, similar to that used in working a button-hole, so that by having each stitch knotted the chance of ripping was lessened.”[80] The age of the Irish mummy (if we may apply that term to the body here described) is considered by some to date back at least 2000 years. [Illustration: Fig. 11. Fragment of Deerskin Garment.] A bed of growing peat is endowed with marvellous powers. It seems to act like the ancient Egyptian process of embalming on the bodies of men or animals that have become accidentally entombed in it, preserving them for centuries after their contemporaries have, by the ordinary laws of nature, totally disappeared, and organic substances, such as butter, seem also to feel its influence. Peat may bear comparison with ice, the well-known preservative properties of which were strikingly illustrated by the discovery on the shores of Lake Oncoul, in Siberia, of a carcass of the _Elephas primigenius_, or mammoth (supposed to have become extinct in the Pleistocene period) in a perfect state, and so well refrigerated that, when thawed, the dogs of the neighbourhood devoured its flesh. Again, in 1846, the summer in Siberia had been unusually hot; the frozen marshes which extend along each side of the river Indigirka were thawed, and a perfectly preserved carcass of a mammoth floated down the stream. This monster had most probably met his death centuries before by sinking into the deep snow of the morasses, was frozen over, and thus remained until the exceptional summer heat melted his icy prison.