dry it up with salt for seventy days, and afterwards deliver it to be carried away. Nevertheless, beautiful women and ladies of quality were not delivered to be embalmed till three or four days after they had been dead;" for which Herodotus assigns a sufficient reason, however degrading to human nature. "But if any stranger or Egyptian was either killed by a crocodile, or drowned in the river, the city where he was cast up was to embalm and bury him honourably in the sacred monument, whom no.one, no, not a relation or friend, but the priests of the Nile only might touch; because they buried cne who was something more than a dead man." Herod. Euterpe, 120. edit. Gale.

Diodorus Siculus relates the funeral ceremonies of the Egyptians more distinctly and clearly, and with some very remarkable additional circumstances. "When any one among the Egyptians die," says he, "all his relations and friends, putting dirt upon their heads, go lamenting about the city, till such time as the body shall be buried: in the mean time, they abstain from baths and wine, and all kinds of delicate meats, neither do they, during that time, wear any costly apparel. The manner of their burials is threefold: one very costly, a second sort less chargeable, and a third very mean. In the first, they say, there is spent a talent of silver; in the second, twenty minæ ; but in the last, there is very little expense. Those who have the care of ordering the body, are such as have been taught that art by their ancestors. These shewing each kind of burial, ask them after what manner they will have the body prepared; when they have agreed upon the manner, they. deliver the body to such as are usually appointed for this office. First, he who has the name of scribe, laying it upon the ground, marks about the flank on the left side how much is to be cut away; then he who is called paraschistes, the cutter or dissector, with an Ethiopic stone, cuts away as much of the flesh as the law commands, and presently runs away as fast as he can; those who are present pursuing him, cast stones at him, and curse him, hereby turning all the execrations, which they imagine due to his office, upon him. For whosoever offers violence, wounds, or does any kind of injury to a body of the same nature with himself, they think him worthy of hatred; but those who are called taricheute, the embalmers, they esteem worthy of honour and respect; for they are familiar with their priests, and go into the temples as holy men, without any prohibition. As soon as they come to embalm the dissected body, one of them thrusts his hands through the wound into the abdomen, and draws forth all the bowels but the heart and kidnies, which another washes and cleanses with wine, made of palms and aromatic odours. Lastly, having wash

ed the body, they anoint it with oil of cedar and other things for about thirty days, and afterwards with myrrh, cinnamon, and other such like matters; which have not only a power to preserve it a long time but also give it a sweet smell, after which they deliver it to the kindred in such manner, that every member remains whole and entire, aud no part of it changed, but the beauty and shape of the fare, seem just as they were before; and the person may be known, even the eyebrows and eyelids remaining as they were at first. By this means many of the Egyptians, keeping the dead bodies of their ancestors in magnificent houses, so perfectly see the true visage and countenance, of those that died many ages before they themselves were born, that in viewing the proportions of every one of them, and the lineaments of their faces, they take as much delight as if they were still living among them. Moreover the friends and nearest relations of the deceased, for the greater pomp of the solemnity, acquaint the judges and the rest of their friends with the time prefixed for the funeral or day of sepulture, declaring that such a one (calling the dead by his name) is such a day to pass the lake, at which time above forty judges appear, and sit together in a semicircle, in a place prepared on the hither side of the lake, where a ship, provided before hand by such as have the care of the business, is haled up to the shore, and steered by a pilot whom the Egyptians in their language called Charon. Hence they say, Orpheus upon seeing this ceremony, while he was in Egypt, invented the fable of hell, partly imitating therein the people of Egypt, and partly adding somewhat of his own. The ship being thus brought to the lake side, before the coffin is put on board, every one is at liberty by the law to accuse the dead of what he thinks him guilty. If any one proves he was a bad man, the judges gives sentence, that the body shall be deprived of sepulture; but in case the informer be convicted of false accusation, then he is severely punished. If no accuser appear, or the information prove false, then all the kindred of the deceased leave off mourning, and begin to set forth his praises, yet say nothing of his birth, (as the custom is among the Greeks) because the Egyptians all think themselves equally noble; but they recount how the deceased was educated from his youth, and brought up to man's estate, exalting his piety towards the gods, and justice towards men, his chastity and other virtues wherein he excelled; and lastly pray and call upon the infernal deities (the gods below) to receive him into the societies of the just. The common people take this from the others, and consequently all is said in his praise by a loud shout, setting likewise forth his virtues in the highest strains of commendation, as one that is to live forever with the iufernal

gods. Then those that have tombs of their own, inter the corpse in places appointed for that purpose, and they that have none, rear up the body in its coffin against some strong wall of their house. But such as are denied sepulture on account of some crime or debt, are laid up at home without coffins; yet when it shall afterwards happen, that any of their posterity grows rich, he commonly pays off the deceased person's debts, and gets his crimes absolved, and so buries him houourably; for the Egyp tians are wont to boast of their parents and their ancestors that were honourably buried. It is a custom likewise among them to pawn the dead bodies of their parents to their creditors, but then those that do not redeem them fall under the greatest disgrace imaginable, and are denied burial themselves at their deaths." See the Necrokedia, or art of embalming by Greenhill, 4to. pl. 421. who endeavoured in vain to recommend and restore the art. But he could not give his countrymen Egyp tian manners; for a dead carcase is to the British, an object of horror; and scarcely any except a surgeon or an undertaker, cares to touch it.

An account of the Asiatic Locust, and of its terrible voraciousness.

[By Adam Clarke, LL. D.J

To-morrow will I bring the locusts ]-The word arbeh, a locust, is probably from the root rabah, he multiplied, became great, mighty, &c. because of the immense swarms of these animals, by which different countries, especially the East are infested. The locust, in entomology, belongs to a genus of insects known among naturalists by the term grylli and includes three species, crickets, grasshoppers, and those commonly called locusts; and as they multiply faster than any other animal in creation, they are properly entitled to the name arbeh, which might be translated the numerous or multiplied ipsect. See this circumstance referred to Judg. vi. 5. vii. 12. Psal. cv. 34. Jer. xlvi. 23. li. 14. Joel i. 6. Nahum iii. 15. Judith ii. 19, 20. where the most numerous armies are compared to the arbeh or locust. The locust has a large open mouth; and in its two jaws, it has four incisive teeth, which traverse each other like scissors, being calculated, frota their mechanism, to gripe or cut. Mr. Volney, in Travels in Syria, gives a striking account of this most awful scourge of God:

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Syria partakes together with Egypt and Persia, and almost all the whole middle part of Asia, in that terrible scourge, I

in secret.

mean those clouds of locusts of which travellers have spoken"; the quantity of them is incredible to any person who has not himself seen them, the earth being covered by them for several leagues round. The noise they make in browsing the plants and trees, may be heard at a distance, like an army plundering Fire seems to follow their tracks. Wherever their legions march, the verdure disappears from the country, like a curtain drawn aside; the trees and plants despoiled of their leaves, make the hideous appearance of winter instantly succeed to the bright scenes of spring. When these clouds of locusts take their flight, in order to surmount some obstacle, or the more rapidly, to cross some desert, one may literally say that the sun i darkened by them."

Baron de Tott gives a similar account: "Clouds of locusts frequently alight on the plains of the Noguais, (the Tartars) and giving preference to their fields of millet, ravage them in an instant. Their approach darkens the horizon, and so enormous is their multitude, it hides the light of the sun. They alight on the fields, and there form a bed of six or seven inches thick. To the noise of their flight, succeeds that of their devouring actively, which resembles the rattling of hail stones;, but its consequences are infinitely more destructive. Fire itself eats not so fast; nor is there any appearance of vegetation to b. found when they again take their flight, and go elsewhere to produce new disasters."

Dr. Shaw, who witnessed most formidable swarms of these in Barbary, in the years 1724 and 1725, gives the following account of them: "They were much larger than our grasshoppers, and had brown spotted wings, with legs and bodies of a bright yellow. Their first appearance was towards the latter end of March. In the middle of April, their numerous swarms, like a succession of clouds, darkened the sun. In the Month of May, they retired to the adjacent plains to deposit their eggs these were no sooner hatched, in June, than the young brood first produced, while in their catterpillar or worm-like state, formed themselves into a compact body of more than a furlong square, and marching directly forward, climbed over trees, walls, and houses, devouring every plant in their way. Within a day or two, another brood was hatched, and advancing in the same manner, gnawed off the young branches and bark of the trees left by the former, making a complete desolation. The inhabitants to stop their progress, made a variety of pits and trenches all over their fields and gardens, which they filled with water, or else heaped up therein heath, stubble, &c. which they set on fire, but to no purpose; for the trenches were quickly filled up, and the fires extinguished, by infinite swarms succecd