SKETCH OF EDWARD ORTON. 613 



Professor Orton was a member of several learned societies; was 

 President of the Sanitary Association of Ohio in 1884 and 1885; 

 received the degree of Ph. D. from Hamilton College in 1876, and 

 that of LL. D. from the Ohio State University in 1881; was elected 

 President of the Geological Society of America in 1896; and was 

 designated at the Boston meeting of the American Association, 

 1898, as president for the Columbus meeting, 1899. 



In addition to his interests in science and theology, Professor 

 Orton was keenly alive to everything that bore on the history of 

 man on this planet. He was long a member of the Ohio State 

 Archaeological and Historical Society, and had recently been made 

 a member of its board of trustees. He was a prominent member 

 of the Old ISTorthwest Genealogical Society, and was the author of 

 a volume, published in 1896, on the Genealogy of the Orton Fam- 

 ily in America. The absolute freedom of his character from any 

 desire for display or self-aggrandizement is well shown by the fact 

 that in this volume, compiled, with enormous labor, in the spare 

 minutes of a busy life, he cuts himself off with one paragraph of a 

 hundred words, while devoting pages to contemporaneous mem- 

 bers of the family of whom the world has never elsewhere heard. 



He was stricken mth hemiplegia in December, 1891, but was 

 able to do a considerable amount of work in his profession after- 

 ward. A few days before his death he said, in a note, that he felt 

 that he had lived out his allotted time, and that his work was done. 

 He never met his classes again, though he continued able to be up 

 and about his home till the hour of his death. He seemed to feel 

 tliat the solemn event was drawing close, during the last two days 

 of his life, and his mind was always busy with the great question, 

 " If a man die, shall he live again ? " He had formed an affirma- 

 tive answer apparently, as he read Browning's Prospice repeatedly 

 in his last hours, and seemed to find in it the gTeatest pleasure and 

 solace. His death was a quiet and painless one — a fitting end to 

 a beautiful life. 



Statistics of cremation, presented by M. Bourneville at the recent an- 

 nual meeting of the society in Paris, show that the number of incinera- 

 tions at the Pere Lachaise crematory has almost steadily increased since 

 1889, and that the whole number last year was 4,513, making 37,068 from 

 the beginning. A fair proportion of the number were women. There are 

 now in Europe and America seventy crematories, twenty-seven of which 

 are in Italy and twenty in the United States. Cremation is making good 

 progress in England, where four crematories are reported from, and two 

 are in course of erection. Germany has six, where 423 incinerations took 

 place in 1898 ; Switzerland and Sweden have two each, Denmark one, and 

 one has been authorized in Norway. 



