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55
materia], wood, or the other, open wicker work. It is
obvious that the real utility of one or other of these modes
of enclosure, depends entirely upon the nature of the soil
and the situation of the cemetery. With regard to the
latter mode of disposition (cremation), there are advantages
in its adoption, 1st, rapid decomposition, and therefore the
less noxious method; 2nd, none or but remote injury to
the living. It would be well to keep in mind, in order
to an unprejudiced view of the subject, what actually occurs
in the decomposition of dead bodies. After the death of
animals, just as after that of plants, their component parts
are reduced to the primary forms from which they were
derived, so that they may begin again at the foot of the
ascending scale of life. Very soon after life is extinct, the
atmospheric oxygen begins to induce a change in some of
the nitrogenous constituents, and this change is soon communicated
to all parts of the body, which undergo a putrefaction,
of which the ultimate results are the conversion of
the carbon into carbonic acid, the hydrogen into water, the
nitrogen into ammonia, nitrous aud nitric acids, and the
sulphur into sulphuretted hydrogen. Before this ultimate
result is attained, intermediate products arc obtained,
which are highly complex in their composition and highly
offensive in their character. The mineral constituents of
the animal frame mingle with the surrounding soil, and are
ready to take part in the nourishment of vegetation, which
construct the organic components of their frames from the
carbonic acid and ammonia furnished by the putrefaction of
the animal, and these serve in their turn as sustenance for
animals whose respiration supplies the air with carbonic
acid, and takes in exchange the oxygen eliminated by the
plant. Of course this disposition is not the immediate
result of the evolution of the accompaniments of the
putrefaction of the dead body, but the ultimate result may
be thus stated, and it is evident that' the injury to public
health is in those cases, and they arc by far the most
numerous, where the noxious products of putrefaction come
into contact with human beings, who are not the natural