When we consider the care and skill with which the dead Egyptians used to be embalmed and encased in their sarcophagi, it is not surprising that their poor bodies have been so well preserved.  At the head of this article you see a mummy as it appears when it has been embalmed and wrapped in its bandages.  Here is the stand on which it is then placed.

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Very often, when the body had been a king or some great personage, its face was covered with a mask of thin gold, and its bandages were ornamented with pictures and inscriptions.

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When this work of decoration was completed, it was placed in a coffin which was made large enough to hold the stand.

This coffin was very handsomely ornamented, and then, in order to make everything very secure indeed, it was enclosed in another or exterior coffin, which was also decorated in the highest style known to Egyptian artists.

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One would now suppose that this great king or priest was safe enough, looking at the matter in an ordinary light.  But the Egyptians did not look at these matters in ordinary lights.  Quite otherwise.  They intended the useless bodies of their grandees to be packed away so that they should not be disturbed as long as the world lasted, little dreaming of the Americans and Europeans who would come along, in a few thousand years, and buy them for their museums.

So they put the mummy, with its stand and its two coffins, into a great stone box called a sarcophagus, and this was fastened and plastered up so as to seem like one solid rock.

Then, if the inmate had ever done anything wonderful (or sometimes, no doubt, if he had not been famous for anything in particular), the history of his great achievements, real or fancied, was sculptured on the stone.  These hieroglyphics have been deciphered in several instances, and we have learned from them a great deal of Egyptian history.

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Dead poor people, as well as kings and princes, were made into mummies in Egypt, but they were not preserved by such costly means as those I have mentioned.  After they had been embalmed, they were wrapped up as well as the means of their relatives would allow, and were placed in tombs and vaults, sometimes with but one coffin, and sometimes without any.

In many cases the mummy was not buried at all, but kept in the house of the family, so that the friends and relatives could always have it with them.  This may have been very consoling to the ancient Egyptians, but to us it seems a truly mournful custom.

And it is by no means distressing to think, that though the people who may be in this country three thousand years hence may possibly find some of our monuments, they will discover none of our bodies.

TAME SNAKES.

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We have often heard of the tamed snakes belonging to the serpent-charmers of India and Africa, but it is seldom that the harmless serpents of civilized countries have been domesticated.  But the common snake, sometimes called the garter-snake, which harmlessly shows its dark green and yellow colors among the grass and bushes, has been tamed and has shown quite a fair amount of respect and affection for its human friends.