serve no useful purpose for me to recite to you the many observations and opinions of eminent legal men, sought for

by the Council of the Cremation Society or otherwise made public, and it will be sufficient to say that there is no law

extant which could bar the practice of Cremation in any part of the British realms. The cremation of an English body, in Milan, whither it was forwarded by me, on the 15th of April, 1878, its reduction to ashes by myself and Italian colleagues, and the burning of the body of an infant by Dr. Price in Wales on January 13, 1884, proved plainly that no penalties could be associated with the practice of cremation in our country, and the recent three cremations in Dorsetshire proved the same thing, if further evidence was wanting as to the legality of the practice.

It is somewhat astonishing that it has taken so many years to prove to the public that this bestowal of the bodies was perfectly legal all along, and it does not redound to the credit of English jurisprudence that a short time ago a Rajah who consulted me as to burning the body of his Ranee had to be told that what he claimed as a right in India could not be accorded him in the capital of the Empire except at a risk of scandal. Fortunately, all this misconception has perished, and nowadays, provided the rite be decently performed in a suitable place, no objection can be maintained. It is here that the prescience of the Cremation Society of England, which was founded in 1874 by some of the most eminent men known to science, admirably manifests itself, inasmuch as it strove, and has already succeeded, in exhibiting to the English world a crematory building which is able to fulfil all that science and hygiene demands. Possibly, as time rolls on, some cheaper method of cremation may be devised, but I do not think that anything is likely to supersede, as far as facility of working is concerned, the crematory at Woking.

No temple or even waiting-room is as yet attached to this crematory, which is, as yet, only the necessary crematory furnace; but inasmuch as it stands upon freehold ground, considerately laid out with shrubs, it is to be hoped that the thinking public will willingly contribute towards the erection of the necessary adjuncts. One lives in hopes even that some giant mind will, out of some colossal purse, enable the Society to complete its self-imposed task of

shewing how cremation can be performed in a way to satisfy the most fastidious sense by endowing it with a sum sufficient to prove to the English public that we here, as well as abroad, are minded to beautify the useful.

It must be understood that the Cremation Society of England is a learned Society, and that it is not founded for trading purposes. It was established to prove the advantages of cremation over burial in the earth, and to shew how expeditiously, reasonably, and decorously it can be carried out. It is a sign of the times that the Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London appointed a sanitary committee to consider the advisability of building a crematorium at the Ilford Cemetery, in order that permissive cremation should be fairly established. A deputation of its notables visited the Woking Crematory on the 23rd of April, 1884, accompanied by Sir T. Spencer Wells, Mr. Ernest Hart, and other eminent members of the Society, and in their presence I reduced 124 lbs. of flesh and bone, forming the hinder part of a horse, to 4 lbs. of ashes in one hour, at a cost for fuel of five shillings and ninepence.

Previous to that, however, on the 1st of April, this year, I reduced 140 lbs. of a cow, containing the largest bones, to 4 lbs. of ashes in an hour and a half, at about the same cost.

Some of the ashes of this last-mentioned cremation were exhibited by Dr. Farquharson, M.P., who himself witnessed a cremation, to the members of the House of Commons, present during the discussion of Dr. Cameron's Disposal of the Dead (Regulation) Bill, and they were justly apostrophised as appearing like frosted silver. I exhibit before you samples of a cremation carried out at Woking, and nothing more beautifully resultant could be desired. The second reading of Dr. Cameron's Bill did not meet the fate which it deserved, yet the division was in many senses a veritable triumph for cremation, and it will be very long indeed before the earnest speeches of Dr. Cameron, Sir Lyon Playfair, and Dr. Farquharson will be forgotten.

Upwards of fifty lectures have been publicly delivered

upon Cremation since the foundation of the Cremation Society of England, on the 13th of January, 1874, and the general consensus of opinion taken from the audiences, has been in favour of the introduction of the practice into England. Without attempting to account for it in any way, I will simply record that in point of numbers, as regards sequence, the supporters rank in majority thus:(1) Medical men and surgeons; (2) Ladies; (3) Clergymen; and (4) Military men; the remainder belonging to the general public; and it is a matter of grief that wellknown sanitary teachers are almost conspicuous by their absence from the roll-call of hygiene in this direction. We are happy, however, in numbering in the ranks such a prominent man as Prof. de Chaumont, F.R.S., who, at the conclusion of a lecture delivered by the Rev. Mr. Voysey, B.A., at Southampton, on the 10th of April, 1884, expressed his firm belief that if we could get cremation carried out, it would go an immense way towards preventing the terrible list of diseases which at present so afflicted humanity. This is exactly in harmony with words contained in a letter addressed to me in 1876 by that renowned sanitary pioneer, Dr. Parkes, and whose colleague I had the honour to be during the Crimean War in 1856. And it is a very curious circumstance, that on looking up my diary, kept at the time, I find records of visits paid to Dardanus, Troy, and elsewhere, in a certain June now twenty-eight years ago, and among the list of those who visited the Necropolitan diggings were honoured names, such as those of Dr. Parkes, Sir T. Spencer Wells, Sir John Kirk, Dr. Beddoe, F.R.S., and others.

Some of these explorers have departed for the silent land, as have also some of the members who, under Sir Henry Thompson's able presidency, founded the English Society. Men, I mean, such as the late Anthony Trollope, Shirley Brooks, and others.

The question of the disposal of the dead has exercised throughout all time the furthest ingenuity of men, and perhaps none but fellow members of the Anthropologic

Institute are able to form any tolerable estimate of the apparent perversity with which they have acted. In some countries burial alone is performed, in others cremation, in some desiccation, in others ocean burial, and in my work upon Cremation I have instanced some very peculiar methods of disposal of the dead. It would project beyond the scope of this paper, however, to refer to the multifarious methods of dealing with the dead, and the jousts are open only for Cremation versus Inhumation, or Fire-burial versus Earth-burial, as the Germans very practically designate it.

I would not insult my hearers by attempting to relate the dangers due to burial in the earth, for to do so would be simply to repeat what I believe almost everyone has read himself or imagined for himself. I am myself tired with registering cases wherein disease has accompanied burial, and if I were to give to you even in the most condensed form possible the sense of the twelve hundred and forty pages of scraps relating to the disposal of the dead which I have collected for myself, and which remain in my possession, you would not, I am sure, be more convinced than you are now that wells can be poisoned, the air polluted, and disease result from the disturbance of ground where it was hoped that epidemical disease was finally laid to rest. Dr. J. Comyns Leach, in his paper read before the Popular Scientific Society at the Aquarium, on the 28th of March, 1884, described how it was possible, arguing upon the lines taken up by M. Pasteur, that even the very worms which work themselves through an infected spot of earth are capable of bringing to the surface those pores or germs which are capable of transmitting the specific disease. Medical works might really become interlined throughout if they were to do full justice to the reports of diseases en-, gendered in this way; and it is something horrible to contemplate that not only a spadeful of earth, but that a piece of brick can contain lurking organisms of possible danger. This has been proved by M. Parize, and the propagation of a malarious fever in San Francisco has even been