Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/644

 530 NOTES, AND QUERIES. [12 sax. DEO. 31,1821. THE EFFECT OF OPENING A COFFIN. (US. xii. 300, 363, 388, 448, 465.) SEVERAL correspondents were good enough to reply to my query given ?.t the first reference, but I think it may be fairly said that the general result of the information was that there is no authentic case of the kind which is popularly thought to be common. Judge, therefore, of my interest when about June last accounts were given in the daily Press of what seemed, on the face of it, to be a thoroughly reliable instance of several bodies having been buried for many years, and falling to dust a few minutes after they were said to have been exposed to air for the first time. Unfortunately a friend who sent me the particular cutting was not sure in which paper it appeared, but the name of Reuter appears at the end of it. The article was reproduced in extenso at p. 141 of Ashore and Afloat for September, 1921, under the heading * Science Jottings,' but Reuter's name was not given there. In spite of the apparent authenticity of the phenomenon, my difficulties in under- standing how the alleged action could take place were not removed, and consequently I wrote as follows to the Secretary, the Academie des Belles -Lettres, Paris : At page 141 of an English monthly magazine called Ashore and Afloat for September, 1921, pub- lished by the Royal Sailors' Bests of Portsmouth, there is an article on ' A Remarkable Discovery in France.' This was made " forty kilometres from Clermont-Ferrand, in the district of Martres- de-Vayre," and it is stated that " the discovery has been described to the Academie des Belles- Lettres by M. Camille Jullian from a report made by M. Auguste Audollerrt, the Auvergne cor- respondent of the Academy. A party of men breaking up the ground with pickaxes struck something hard, which proved to be the cover of a Gallo-Roman stone coffin. The cover when raised revealed a beautiful woman, the flesh as perfect as it had been on the day of her death, and her long plaited hair arranged around her head. In a few minutes the body exposed to the atmosphere crumbled to dust, and soon there was nothing left but a skeleton robed in a serge dress. The woman had lain in her coffin for eighteen centuries, perfectly preserved by the emanations of carbonic acid gas from the neigh- bouring mineral springs. The period was ac- curately determined by experts who examined the various objects buried in the grave." This is a matter (in connection with my Popular Fallacies, at which I have been at work for 27 years) that I have been collecting information upon and inquiring into for some time, and as 1 this incident appears to be so authentic I should j be greatly obliged if you could give me some more information upon the subject. To indicate the difficulty that I find in be- lieving the statement about crumbling to dust, I would point out that it is stated that the coffin was struck by a pickaxe, and that the heavy stone cover was removed, and one would have thought that this would be ample to cause any body which was on the point of crumbling to dust to do so immediately, without waiting for the few minutes in which the atmospheric action is supposed to have had such a marvellous effect. Furthermore, I would suggest that if this action, which is implied to be a chemical one, took place, it could not be due to the nitrogen of the atmosphere, but only to the oxygen. And if the combination took place in a few minutes as stated, then there would be a considerable rise of temperature, not to say a red-hot heat ! Also, it is stated that the flesh was perfect as it had been on the day of death, and if that were so, how could it crumble to dust a few minutes afterwards ? The statement that it was " perfectly preserved " by the carbonic acid gas is made twice, for I have not quoted the whole article. Furthermore, certain putrefactive bacteria, as you know, are of an anaerobic character, and consequently their action would not be in the least interfered with by the fact that there was a large amount of CO 2 surrounding the body, and if this were indeed an efficient method of preserving flesh, then it would be vastly cheaper to put the carcasses of sheep and oxen in an atmosphere of carbonic acid gas when they are brought, say, from New Zealand to England rather than the expensive process of keeping them in refrigerators ! If you have any further information referring to this particular case or any other on the same subject, I should much esteem either copies of it or the exact references. My letter was forwarded to M. A. Audol- lent, and in due course he replied by a letter dated Sept. 30 last, of which the following is a translation t Musee de Clermont-Ferrand, Clermont-Ferrand, Sept. 30, 1921. Sir, M. Cagnat, permanent secretary of 1' Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, forwarded to me the letter which you wrote to him on the subject of the tombs of Martres-de- Veyre, the contents of which are preserved at the museum in our town, and has asked me to give you some explanation on the subject. I should have done this before if two successive journeys had not taken up most of the time during the month of August. The account which yoi read in the English magazine Ashore and Afloat is not accurate ; and, indeed, the astonishment caused you by certain statements in that article is quite com- prehensible. Thus, the coffins in question were not of stone but of wood. I was not present at the discovery, contrary to what nearly all the papers have said, seeing that the two discoveries had taken place in 1851 and 1893 ; but from the contemporary testimony it does not seem that the workmen's pickaxe had struck the coffins. On the other hand,