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correctives of these matters, but as before stated, the
vegetable world, naturally is.
Now we know that the operation of cooking animal
food delays for a time the putrefactive powers, and where
it does commence its character is very materially altered,
because the changes are less complex. This diminished
complexity of change, or in other words this simplicity of
change, is induced by the rapid process of burning, or
cremation, the great and white heat of which process
reduces at once the complex matters of the body to very
simple ones, and ultimately to carbonic acid, a product of
ordinary combustion, water and sulphuric acid. And the
mineral constituents would remain as an ash, which
probably would be handed over to the representatives of
the deceased to be preserved—never, however, to assist in
poisoning the blood, or otherwise, of the living.
Mr. P. EL Holland's objections, quoted from his letter
in the Standard, are to the following effect :—" So might
those employed to burn bodies be occasionally oversparing
of fuel, and when they were so the danger and annoyance
from imperfect burning would be far worse even than
imperfect burial." This, however, has but little force,
since a most unusually great degree of neglect must arise
to cause the imperfection he fears. No doubt the balance
of feeling is in favour of burying our dead, therefore the
wise and proper course to pursue is to bury them far away
from human habitations, and a sufficient distance beneath
the earth's surface, so that the products of decomposition
may be as far as possible got rid of. Drain the buryingground
sufficiently deep, and carry the fluid matters into
channels where they cannot by any chance mingle with water
used for drinking purposes, and this mode of disposing of
the dead must be considered as entirely unobjectionable,
whatever description of envelope may be chosen for the
body upon depositing it in the earth.