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law, pig-keepers may at present multiply to any extent.
Whether the offensive smells given off from the manufacturies
and other places are injurious to health or not
they must tend to injure property, for people, unless
compelled, will not come and live where they must inhale
all kinds of stinks in the place of pure air.
The annual inspection of Cow and Slaughter-houses,
to the number of 55, was made for the purpose of renewing
the Licenses; all the old ones were renewed, and two
new applications were objected to, owing to the premises
not being completed in which the slaughtering was to
take place.
Cremation.—The subject of Cremation, or burning of
human remains instead of ordinary burial, has latterly
begun to attract the attention of thinking people.
This mode of disposing of bodies is by no means new.
The custom prevailed amongst the earlier nations of Europe
long before the advent of Christianity. The Christian
religion brought with it a revolution of feeling, and in its
doctrines of the immortality of the soul and resurrection of
the body, inspired a greater reverence for the dead.
The early Christians delighted to have the bodies of
departed friends in close proximity to their own abodes,
hence the practice of burying the dead in churchyards in
the midst of the living became general.
That the feeling which suggested this mode of disposal
was a natural and praiseworthy one, cannot for a moment
be doubted; but with rapid increase of population, especially
in large towns, it was found that the churchyards
soon became filled, and inconveniences arose in the making
of new graves; bodies in a state of decomposition were
often exposed, and gave offence to the senses and feelings,
to say nothing of tho deleterious influences brought to bear
on the atmosphere around.