And yet any one looking at the relics of various saints, especially those of St.Carlo, preserved with such tender care in the crypt of Milan Cathedral, will see that they have shared the common fate, being either mummified or reduced to skeletons; and this is true in all cases, as far as my observation has extended.

What even a great theologian can be induced to believe and testify in a somewhat similar matter, is seen in St.Augustine's declaration that the flesh of the peacock, which in antiquity and in the early Church was considered a bird somewhat supernaturally endowed, is incorruptible.

The saint declares that he tested it and found it so (see the De Civitate dei, xxi, c.

4, under the passage beginning Quis enim Deus).

With this we may compare the testimony of the pious author of Sir John Mandeville's Travels, that iron floats upon the Dead Sea while feathers sink in it, and that he would not have believed this had he not seen it.