23 



should have been erected within a certain distance of cemeteries. 

 For as the revelations of the Commission of 1850 showed, that 

 as graveyards became saturated so they became dangerous from 

 the gases evolved, there ought to have been a sanitary cordon, 

 which would have prevented the evils in store for the present 

 generation, in the large population collected around the metro- 

 politan cemeteries. 



It is an interesting subject for enquiry, why the instinct 

 of men leads them always to build near a cemetery. Such is 

 the fact. It was objected to a site which had been chosen for 

 a cemetery at Tamworth that it was too far out of the town. 

 I replied that, unfortunately, the existence of the cemetery would 

 be sure to draw the population that way. I prophesied that 

 within a short time after the opening of the cemetery, a public- 

 house would be erected close to the gates, and other houses 

 would creep up to keep it company. The prophecy has not 

 been verified so far as the public-house is concerned but it has 

 been verified, as I expected, as regards other houses. Now as 

 cemeteries (this one among the number) are usually situated, 

 like churches, on a hill, we have again this drainage difficulty 

 to contend with. The cemeteries being, in fact, centres of 

 infection, their position enables them to distribute that infection ; 

 and where there is not a water supply apart from wells, they 

 must be sources of danger. 



But a new danger has lately been discovered, and this is 

 the second fact unknown at the time of the passing of the 

 Extramural Literment Act. It has long been held that all disease 

 arose from some kind of fungus germ. The theory of epidemics 

 is that these germs, finding certain suitable soil, multiply rapidly. 

 The process is somewhat like that of the distribution of thistle- 

 down. Imagine a field of dandelions and thistles ; if you could 

 provide that these seeds should be distributed by the wind over 

 an asphalt playground, the distribution would produce no crop 

 of dandelions and thistles. Here and there erosion might have 

 taken place, and one solitary specimen might from time to time 

 take root. But imagine this field to be situate amidst ordinary 

 pasture-land, it would be a centre for the propagation of thistles 



