84 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERT. 



means of deadening sound will be a great boon. Solid walls and solid floors 

 transmit sound in the highest degree. Is there no remedy ? The late Mr. 

 Cubitt had some trouble at Balmoral with certain floors, and remembered 

 that in taking down an old palace floor (many years before) vast quantiiies 

 of cockle-shells fell out from betwixt the joists. These had been used in 

 plugging. The idea was acted upon. Cockles were dredged, and brought ; 

 the shells were cleaned, and dried, and used, with beneficial effect. The 

 cellular spaces thus produced absorbed sound. Some highly cellular texture 

 may be applied to Avails, ceilings, and floors, which shall resist fire and ordi- 

 nary decay, allow of finish, and yet deaden sound. Who is to invent and 

 introduce such materials ? They may patent the invention and make a for- 

 tune, if they will only abate the existing nuisance, and enable us to have 

 solid parti-walls and fire-proof floors without being compelled to hear what 

 is going on up stairs and in the next house. The Builder. 



ON THE CREMATION OF THE DEAD. 



An association of gentlemen has been recently formed in London, who 

 have ple'dged themselves- to sustain the practice of what quaint Sir Thomas 

 Brown aptly called " Hydriotaphia, or Urnburial." These gentlemen set 

 forth that they have been moved to take this singular step by many con- 

 siderations, of which the most creditable and the most forcible certainly are 

 those which arc derived from a reference to the effect upon the public health 

 of the common practice of inhumation. 



They allege that the gases which are evolved in the process of decompo- 

 sition from any considerable " necropolis," or city of the dead, must inevita- 

 bly affect injuriously the atmosphere of the surrounding region ; and since 

 it is not possible that any large proportion of the dead of a great and crowded 

 metropolis should be interred at a great distance from the place of their 

 residence in life the expense of the transport, and the inconvenience 

 thereby entailed upon surviving relatives, making such transport very bur- 

 densome to the mass of the middle classes even, and quite out of the ques- 

 tion for the preponderating multitudes of the poor they insist upon the 

 imperative necessity of such a general change in our manner of dealing 

 with the dead, as shall adequately protect the living. 



That our strong feeling in favor of the custom of interment is not founded 

 on any intrinsic instincts of human nature is sufficiently established, say the 

 friends of cremation, by the oscillations of public opinion in regard to this 

 matter through many ages and over many lands ; and although we may 

 shrink from the mere suggestion of a change in the established funeral cus- 

 toms of Christendom, we must remember that our sensibilities are, after all, 

 really educated ; and that no consideration of this sort should restrain us at 

 least from a calm and quiet investigation of the grounds upon which the ad- 

 vocates of a reform in the mode of funeral obsequies advance their startling 

 propositions in favor of consuming in the purifying flames, and preserving 

 in sacred vessels, those precious remains of the loved and lost, which we now 

 consign to the gradual destruction of nature's chemistry. 



