have therefore been devised for this purpose, but are all open to certain objections. Those in the letter-line over the windows are too high up, and, as well as the wicket-sashes in the doors and end-windows,, expose passengers to severe draughts, and, consequently, are seldom allowed to be open.

The eighth annual report of the Master Car-builders' Association, in convention at Cincinnati in June of last year, contains the report of a committee on heating and ventilation of much interest. The discussion on this report clearly shows the difficulties of the subject, and the various opinions and experiences of the representatives of different railroads, as well as a disposition to do something to improve the construction of cars, with respect to their sanitary arrangements. The report admits fully the importance of ventilation, and quotes at length Dr. Smith's experiments upon himself in the lead-chamber. It admits that a car has hardly sufficient airspace for four, instead of seventy-five persons; and that the solid and liquid impurities given off by a car-full of passengers, amounting, according to Prof. Huxley's estimate, to two pounds every twenty minutes, will no more go out of roofventilators without forcing, than fire-damp out of a mine.

The top and letter-line ventilators have proved entirely inadequate to effect the requisite change of air. The arrangements for admitting air at the end of the car, depending on the motion of the train, are most efficient, but most objectionable on account of the draught. To admit 2,400 feet per minute, at as slow a rate as five feet per second, there must be an opening as large as the whole end of the car; to make a greater velocity endurable, the air must be distributed through the car before reaching the passengers.

The system of Messrs. Sanborn & Gates, 15 West Street, Boston, was mentioned very favorably by the committee. This consists in a fan-wheel, carried by a pulley attached to one of the axles, which forces air into the car, through a strainer of wire-gauze, at the first side window. The air is conducted around the roof in a 6-inch pipe, perforated at proper intervals, and finds its exit through registers in the floor. This apparatus has been applied to a car on the Boston & Albany Railroad, and was tested by a company of gentlemen well known to the public, in May last. The report of a committee

of observation will be found in the "Boston Post," May 6, 1874. When the car had been thoroughly filled with smoke, on admitting the air it was entirely cleared in about six minutes. It is intended to regulate the temperature and moisture by means of a heater and evaporator.

Mr. Adams, of the Boston & Albany Railroad, says the above apparatus works well, except on up-grades, where speed is too low for the best effect. It seems evident that some combination of steam-heating and forced ventilation must some time be found to solve the problem under consideration, unless railroad companies continue to be deterred by the expense incidental to its introduction. It was not intended to go into a critical examination of methods here. Such practical questions are for car-builders and railroad corporations to consider. The public should see that the efforts of these parties are not suspended through motives of false economy, or a lack of appreciation of the importance of perfect ventilation for all passenger-cars, both summer and winter, and in all weathers.

CREMATION AND BURIAL:

AN EXAMINATION OF THEIR RELATIVE ADVANTAGES.

31

BY J. F. A. ADAMS, M. D.

(OF PITTSFIELD.)

CREMATION AND BURIAL.

One of the most striking results of the Vienna Exposition of 1873, was the diffusion throughout the civilized world of an interest in the subject of cremation, and in the substitution of this ancient method of disposing of the dead for burial, which has been the universal custom of all Christian peoples. At this Exposition, Prof. Brunetti, of Padua, exhibited in a glass box three pounds and three-quarters of delicate white ashes, obtained by the incineration of a human body. The box bore this inscription: "Vermibus erepti, puro consumimur igni." These ashes were the first practical result of a study which had occupied many active minds in Italy since 1869; and all who saw them involuntarily fell to thinking whether such a change, through the purifying agency of fire, were not a more fitting destiny for the cast-off body than the corruption of the grave. This feeling found expression in England through Sir Henry Thompson, who had become a convert to cremation and advocated its adoption. An able reply from Mr. Holland, Medical-Inspector of Burials for England and Wales, opposing the innovation as not being a sanitary necessity, elicited from Sir Henry Thompson a second paper, more powerful in its advocacy than the first. Hence followed an animated discussion of the subject by the press, both in England and America, and a popular interest which has manifested itself in the formation of cremation societies both in London and New York. Simultaneously, the interest has extended itself over Europe, and cremation has found a strong support in Germany, Austria and Switzerland; the first named, with her customary thoroughness, speedily introducing a method far superior to that of Brunetti.

The arguments in favor of cremation are almost exclusively sanitary, being based upon the supposed inadequacy