Cremation of the Dead. Essie William

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32

Potter.

33

See Plate V.

34

Jamieson.

35

Mr. Hemsworth has suggested an apparatus for the purpose.

36

Dr. Parkes, 'Practical Hygiene,' 4th edit. 1874.

37

'J. Arch. Soc.' vol. xvi.

38

The commissioners sent to report upon the state of the English graveyards in the year 1872 found no less than 130 cemeteries occupied by our dead. Forty-five of them contained no monuments, and 65 only headstones of the commonest kind. The French had gathered together some 28,000 of their dead, and formed one large campo santo. The English commission reported that it would require 5,000l. to put the graveyards in seemly order, and an annual expenditure of some 200l. more. It appears that the graves have been frequently rifled by the Tartar peasantry in search of rings and other valuables. See 'Daily Telegraph,' Oct. 30, 1874.

39

'Iliad.'

40

Dr. Parkes.

41

Gamgee on the 'Cattle Plague.'

42

Frazer.

43

The last public utterance was made by Dr. Wheelhouse, of Leeds, in his address of October in the present year. He says: —

'Do we not shun, and that most wisely, the presence of those afflicted with infectious diseases so long as they remain amongst us; and yet, no sooner are they removed by death, than we are content, with tender sympathy indeed, and most loving care it is true (but with how much wisdom?), to lay them in the ground that they may slowly dissipate their terribly infectious gases through the soil, and saturating that, may thereby recharge the rains of heaven, as they filter through it, with all their virulence and terrible power of reproduction in the systems of the living. I am not the thorough and entire believer in the disinfecting and depurating power of the soil that I once was; for terrible examples of its failure have, in my judgment, come under my notice.

'Sir Henry Thompson has lately sounded a note of alarm on this subject; and though, for the present, it may fall upon ears unheeding or unsympathetic, I yet venture to think that, in time to come, his warning will be enforced by stern necessity, and that some better method of disposing of our dead will take the place of the burial so honoured and revered by us.'

44

Frazer.

45

Spondanus.

46

Frazer.

47

'Iron.'

48

Veritz.

49

Welch and Davis.

50

Dr. Parkes, in the chapter upon the Disposal of the Dead, in 'Practical Hygiene,' evidently leans to the opinion that burial in the sea might suit maritime nations.

51

Dr. von Steinbeis.

52

Mr. H. J. Hutchinson.

53

Buckland.

54

Frazer.

55

Lieut. Oliver.

56

Howarth.

57

This word conveys the meaning of burial in the actual earth better perhaps than any other.

58

Wylie.

59

Dr. Eatwell.

60

Lockhart.

61

By Mr. McCullum in 1873.

62

Rossellini.

63

By Professor Gennarelli.

64

See the body of Mrs. Van Butchell, embalmed by Dr. Hunter and Mr. Carpenter in 1775.

65

Walker.

66

What a majority this must be, if the human skeleton from the Florida Reef is rightly estimated by Agassiz at 10,000 years old, the Egyptian relics from the Limant Bay borings by Rosière at 30,000, the remains from the New Orleans forest by Dowler at 50,000 years, and if the human bones found at the Illinois river, at Natchez, at Calaveras, at Anguilla Island, and in the Ashley river, are correctly stated by Schmidt, Dickeson, Whitney, Rijgersma, Holmes, Lubbock, and others, as contemporaneous with the mammoth and mastodon!

67

Hutchinson.

68

Bradley.

69

Hutchinson.

70

St. John.

71

Dr. A. Campbell.

72

Tacitus.

73

Bogouschefsky.

74

Crawfurd, &c.

75

Feudge.

76

Elliot.

77

Major Godwin-Austen.

78

St. A. St. John.

79

Professor Le Conte.

80

Chapman.

81

Griffiths.