422 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



but this arrangement was at some distance 

 in the longitudinal direction of the tablet 

 from the groups first mentioned, which were 

 in both cases written in couples. Major 

 Beebe claimed that these groups of six letters 

 each, when separated into alternate threes 

 and read right and left respectively, are 

 the names of eight of the zodiacal signs on 

 the Davenport slate the other four signs, 

 Capricorn, Aries, Cancer, and Libra, being 

 represented by four initial letters on the 

 back of one of the Piqua tablets. These 

 letters represent the North, South, East, and 

 West, respectively, and correspond to the 

 " world-holders," as they were called, to 

 which a particular importance was attached. 

 The most significant detail of this identifi- 

 cation is that the forms of the letters are 

 almost precisely those that occur about the 

 Mediterranean, whose phonetic values have 

 been determined by Alois Hess in his work 

 on the classification of old Spanish coins. 

 Should this identification be correct, the 

 point arises whether this alphabet originated 

 in this country or in the old. Major Beebe 

 claims to have traced each form of letter to 

 aboriginal American picture-symbols, in 

 which the same significance obtains in both 

 European and American forms. Having 

 fixed the significance of the letters, he has, 

 he says, deciphered the inscription on the 

 stone from Grave Creek, West Virginia, and 

 that on the axe found at Pemberton, New 

 Jersey. 



Cremation in Italy. As an evidence of 

 the progress which cremation is making in 

 Italy, the Journal of the Italian Hygienic So- 

 ciety states that one hundred and thirty-nine 

 cremations have taken place in the crema- 

 tories at Milan and Lodi, and that the num- 

 ber increases every month. Nine societies 

 and nine committees for cremation exist in 

 the kingdom, and new crematories are to be 

 built at Rome, Varcse, Leghorn, Pavia, Cre- 

 mona, and Udine. Signor Loria, of Milan, 

 has recently offered the municipality of the 

 city twenty thousand francs for the es- 

 tablishment and maintenance of a labora- 

 tory for making autopsies of bodies des- 

 tined to be incinerated when that is deemed 

 expedient, or may be called for by the cir- 

 cumstances of the case,. The French Gov- 

 ernment apparently docs not favor the 



movement much. To a petition from the 

 municipality of Paris, asking permission to 

 incinerate bodies in certain cases, the Min- 

 ister of the Interior replied that the law of 

 the year XII, prescribing burial, would have 

 first to be repealed, and the Government did 

 not consider that the question had yet been 

 enough studied by science or advanced in 

 public opinion to justify the assumption of 

 the responsibility of presenting it to the 

 legislative bodies. 



Sanitation of Cemeteries. The Munici- 

 pal Council of Paris in 1879 appointed a 

 commission on the sanitation of cemeter- 

 ies, with instructions to inquire especially 

 whether that object could not be fully ac- 

 complished by the employment of chemical 

 or physical agents combined with drainage ; 

 whether it could be assured for the future 

 by the same means ; and whether the dis- 

 appearance of the organic parts of bodies 

 could not be expedited by the addition, in 

 the coffins or the soil, of chemical agents 

 and other substances ; and whether such 

 additions were likely to do any harm. This 

 committee, after a careful examination of 

 the soil and air within the cemeteries and 

 around them, has reported that, though ac- 

 cidents may have occurred from the escape 

 of gases in close tombs and churches where 

 bodies have been buried, they are not to 

 be feared in the open air; that deleteri- 

 ous gases produced by the decomposition of 

 corpses buried at the depth of a metre and 

 a half (five feet) do not reach the surface ; 

 that nearly the entire organic constituents 

 of dead bodies are consumed in the course 

 of five years, and that consequently a tol- 

 erably permeable soil is not likely to be sat- 

 urated ; that this consumption may be ac- 

 celerated by drainage ; and that there is no 

 danger to wells if they are at a reasonable 

 distance away. These conclusions agree 

 fully with those expressed by M Robiuet in 

 his article " Are Cemeteries Unhealthy ? " * 

 They may possibly be modified in conse- 

 quence of the researches that have brought 

 the cadaveric alkaloids, the ptomaines, to 

 light, and of M. Pasteur's discoveries con- 

 cerning the preservation of carbuncular 

 germs in the soil. 



* Published in the " Popular Science Monthly " 

 for September, 1881. 



