The elder is still believed in the south of Germany to drive away evil spirits, and in Denmark and Norway it is held in the same veneration. It is customary in the Tyrol to plant an elder bush in the form of a cross on a new grave, and if it blossoms, the soul of the body interred beneath is supposed to be in Paradise. CHAPTER XVII. MUMMIES AND THEIR USE IN MEDICINE—THE UNICORN. Who first introduced mummies as medicinal agents is not known, but there is something particularly weird and gruesome in the idea of the ancient physician dosing a sick patient, with the remains of a predeceased fellowman, in order to restore him to health. The art of embalming was practised thousands of years before the Christian era, and was regarded as the greatest token of esteem that could be paid by the living to the dead. Pomet says there were two kinds of embalming practised by the ancient Egyptians. The first and most costly was used to none but persons of the highest class, and was valued at a talent of silver, or about £500. Three people were employed in the operation; one was a kind of designer or overseer, who marked out such parts of the body as were to be opened. The next was a dissector, who with a knife of Ethiopian stone cut the flesh as much as necessary, and as the law would permit, and immediately afterwards fled away with all the expedition possible, because it was the custom of the relatives and domestics to pursue the dissector with stones and do him all the injuries they could, treating him as an impious wretch and the worst of men.