has a great deal to say in defence of his views.  I am obliged to acknowledge that in many cases important benefits would follow the adoption of urn-sepulture.  The question to be considered is, what is the best way to dispose of the mortal part of man when the soul has left it?  A first suggestion might be to endeavour to preserve it in the form and features of life; and, accordingly, in many countries and ages, embalming in its various modifications has been resorted to.  But all attempts to prevent the human frame from obeying the Creator’s law of returning to the elements have miserably failed.  And surely it is better a thousand times to ‘bury the dead from our sight,’ than to preserve a hideous and revolting mockery of the beloved form.  The Egyptian mummies every one has heard of; but the most remarkable instance of embalming in recent times is that of the wife of one Martin Van Butchell, who, by her husband’s desire, was embalmed in the year 1775, by Dr. William Hunter and Mr. Carpenter, and who may be seen in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London.  She was a beautiful woman, and all that skill and science could do were done to preserve her in the appearance of life; but the result is nothing short of shocking and awful.  Taking it, then, as admitted, that the body must return to the dust from whence it was taken, the next question is, How?  How shall dissolution take place with due respect to the dead, and with least harm to the health and the feelings of the living?

The two fashions which have been universally used are, burial and burning.  It has so happened that burial has been associated with Christianity, and burning with heathenism; but I shall admit at once that the association is not essential, though it would be hard, without very weighty reason indeed, to deviate from the long-remembered ‘earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’  But such weighty reason the author of this treatise declares to exist.  The system of burial, he says, is productive of fearful and numberless evils and dangers to the living.  In the neighbourhood of any large burying-place, the air which the living breathe, and the water which they drink, are impregnated with poisons the most destructive of health and life.  Even where the damage done to air and water is inappreciable by our senses, it is a predisposing cause of headache, dysentery, sore throat, and low fever;’ and it keeps all the population around in a condition in which they are the ready prey of all forms of disease.  I shall not shock my readers by relating a host of horrible facts, proved by indisputable evidence, which are adduced by the surgeon to show the evils of burial:  and all these evils, he maintains, may be escaped by the revival of burning.  Four thousand human beings die every hour; and only by that swift and certain method can the vast mass of decaying matter which, while decaying, gives off the most subtle and searching poisons, be resolved with the elements without