Science.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1115, 5 August 1882, Page 6 (Supplement)

Science.

BRUNELLI PROCESS OF EMBALMING. The process of embalming is as follows, and is called the “Brunelli process:” 1. The circulatory system is cleansed by washing with cold water till it issues quite clear from the boay. This may occupy from two to five hours. 2. Alcohol is injected so as to abstract as much water as possible. This occupies about a quarter of an hour. 3. Ether is then injected to abstract the fatty matter. This occupies from two to ten hours. 4. A strong solution of tannin is then injected. This occupies for imbibition two to ten hours. 5. The body is then dried in a current of warm air passed over heated chloride of calcium. This may occupy two to five hours. The body is then perfectly preserved, and resists decay. The Italians exhibit specimens whjch are as hard as stone, retain the shape perfectly, and are equal to the best wax models. It will be observed in this process that those substances most prone to decay are removed, and the remaining portions are converted by the tannin into a substance resembling leather.

hen’s eggs twelve hundred years old. At St. Eloi, in the Faubourg St. Antoine in France, a nestful of eggs was found under the ruins of the old palace where King Dagobert Ijved. So they knew that 1,200 years before some hen had stolen her just as our hens do nowadays, and had been disturbed, and left the nest before the eggs had been sat upon. The workmen, who, in clearing the ruins to build the old church that still stands there, had found the nest, were going to throw away the eggs, but the Abbe Denis, who was then curate of the parish, remembering that wheat had grown from grains that were found with the mummies in Egyptian tombs, which must have been 3,000 years old, thought there might be life in these old eggs. He set them under one of his good, motherly old hens, and sure enough, in twenty-one days she came off the nest with a fine brood of “ King Dagobert ” chickens, as they have ever since been called. The breed has been carefully kept ever since, and the Dagobert foXvls have so increased that the abbe of the parish has organized a sale of “King Dagobert” eggs for the benefit of the poor of his parish.—Bulletin.

A good many hundred years ago a few Monks, who had been missionaries in Persia, on their return to France brought away with them from Shyraz a bundle of vine-cuttings, which they planted at their humble retreat in a remote part of France, and which, from its loneliness, they called the hermitage. It was, in fact, at that time a howling wilderness, and would have remained in the same condition to this day, probably, were it not for those renowned vineyards and their celebrated produce—Hermitage Wine. Granite rock and granite gravel yield but scanty pasturage at the best, and next to nothing in cereals. There, however, on that granite hill, which rises to an elevation of five to six hundred feet directly behind the town of Tain, and twelve miles from Valencez, are located those famous vineyards. A ravine divides the southern bank into two nearly equal portions. In the western half, where the Monks built their hermitage, the mouldering ruins of which may be yet seen’, the rock is more compact and barren than on the eastern side, which is comparatively loose and friable. In the upper and middle regions the soil consists almost entirely of the decaying granite, but near the base there is an admixture of pebbles, and the lowest part is composed of fluriatile sand. In one or <two places small veins of limestone may be observed. The plants cultivated for red wine are the large and small shyraz ; and for white wine liousanne and Marsanne. Since the middle of the seventeenth century the fame of the wines of the Hermitage, and those of Cote Rotie, has been established, and at present are universally acknowledged to rank high among the best wines of France, and by many connoisseurs preferred before all others.