186 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



ined, the committee say that in their opinion cremation would 

 present advantages over the mode of inhumation in a com- 

 mon graveyard, where insufficient space is reserved for each 

 body. Fetid emanations and the alteration of subterranean 

 waters may, in fact, result where the earth is saturated with 

 organic matter in decomposition, and the air can not pene- 

 trate in sufficient quantity to produce a complete combus- 

 tion. The most serious inconveniences of our present ceme- 

 teries, however, disappear where only a limited number of 

 bodies sufficiently separated are contained in properly per- 

 meable strata. The land thus used might be returned to 

 agriculture, after having been closed for a number of years ; 

 for the bodies buried in permeable soil are subjected to a 

 sort of slow and indirect combustion, which does not present 

 any inconvenience so long as the intermediate and danger- 

 ous products do not reach the surface of the ground. On 

 the third point, the report asserts that inhumation presents 

 guarantees for society which are not found in cremation, if 

 the question be considered with reference to the investiga- 

 tion and determination of poisons, the existence of which is 

 often not suspected till long after death. Dividing poisons 

 into two classes, those which cremation would cause to dis- 

 appear and those which it would not destroy completely, the 

 committee say that in the case of the former class, in which 

 rank all toxical substances of organic origin, and also arsen- 

 ic, phosphorus, and corrosive sublimate the very poisons, 

 by the way, most commonly employed cremation would 

 obliterate all traces of the crime, would thus insure immuni- 

 ty from punishment, and so encourage the repetition of crime. 

 In the case of the second class of poisons, which includes cop- 

 per and lead, for example, while the metal might be found in 

 the ashes, yet the persons interested would, it is clear, always 

 have the opportunity of dispersing those ashes, or of replac- 

 ing them with others ; so that, in this event, the traces of 

 crime would also be easily obliterated. For these reasons 

 criminals might find in cremation a security which they have 

 not in the present process of inhumation, and which it is im- 

 portant not to afford them, for it would be a source of more 

 serious danger to the population than the insalubrity of cem- 

 eteries. The objections thus raised against cremation, how- 

 ever, would disappear if the law required that before any 



