seum: The King Arcesilaus is seated under a pavilion upon
the deck of a ship. His head is covered with a kind of hat with a
large brim, and his hair hangs down upon his shoulders. He is clothed
in a white tunic and embroidered cloak or mantle, and he carries a
scepter in his left hand; under his seat is a leopard, and his right
hand he holds toward a young man, who makes the same gesture, and he
is weighing in a large scale assafoetida, which is being let down
into the hold of the ship. We know that he deals with assafoetida
because one of the personages (the one who lifts up his arm toward the
beam of the scale) holds in his right hand something resembling that
which is in the scale, and the Greek word traced near it signifies
"that which prepares _silphium_." Assafoetida, the resinous
matter of the silphium, is used largely by the Greeks in the
preparation of their food. The Orientals to-day make frequent use of
it and call it the delight of the gods; while in Europe, because of
its repulsive odor, it has long been designated as _stircus diaboli_.

[Illustration: Fig. 1.--ANCIENT GREEK VASE.]

[Illustration: Fig. 2.--TOP OF GREEK VASE.]

* * * * *

SNOW-RAISED BREAD.

Somebody thinks he has discovered that snow, when incorporated with
dough, performs the same office as baking powder or yeast. "I have
this morning for breakfast," says a writer in the _English Mechanic_,
"partaken of a snow-raised bread cake, made last evening as follows:
The cake when baked weighed about three quarters of a pound. A large
tablespoonful of fine, dry, clean snow was intimately stirred with a
spoon into the dry flour, and to this was added a tablespoonful of
caraways and a little butter and salt. Then sufficient cold water was
added to make the dough of the proper usual consistence (simply
stirred with the spoon, not kneaded by the warm hands), and it was
immediately put into a quick oven and baked three quarters of an hour.
It turned out both light and palatable. The reason," adds the writer,
"appears to be this: the light mass of interlaced snow crystals hold
imprisoned a large quantity of condensed atmospheric air, which, when
the snow is warmed by thawing very rapidly in the dough, expands
enormously and acts the part of the carbonic acid gas in either baking
powder or yeast. I take the precise action to be, then, not due in any
way to the snow itself, but simply to the expansion of the fixe