556 



CREEPER 



CREMONA 



stant habit, as it searches for insects and their larvae 

 in the crevices of the bark. The nest is usually in 

 a hole of a decayed tree. The creeper is one of the 

 smallest of British birds, although larger than the 

 wren. Its prevalent colour is dark gray above, with 

 spots of yellow and white ; the under parts are white. 

 The Wall Creeper ( Tichodroma muraria ) of the 

 south of Europe frequents walls and the faces of 

 rocks. The Nuthatch (q.v. ) is a closely allied 

 genus. 



Creeper. See CLIMBING PLANTS. 



Creighton, MANDELL, historian, born at Car- 

 lisle, 5th July 1843, from Durham School gained 

 a postmastership at Merton College, Oxford, in 

 1862, and was elected a fellow in 1866. He became 

 vicar of Embleton, Northumberland, in 1875, first 

 professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge 

 in 1884, Bishop of Peterborough in 1891, and of 

 London (1896). His chief works are Simon de 

 Mont fort ( 1876). History of the Papacy during the 

 Reformation Period (5 vols. 1882-94), and the 

 sumptuous Queen Elizabeth ( 1897 ). 



Crema, a town of Lombardy, 27 miles NW. of 

 Cremona, with a cathedral ( 1341 ). Pop. 8500. 



Cremation, the reduction of the dead human 

 body to ashes by fire, was a very early and wide- 

 spread usage of antiquity. The early Aryans as 

 opposed to the non- Aryan aborigines of India the 

 Greeks, Romans, Slavs, Celts, and Germans, burned 

 their dead, so that cremation may be regarded as 

 the universal custom of the Indo-European races. 

 The graves of North Europe throughout the ' bronze 

 age ' contain only jars with ashes. It was Chris- 

 tianity that gradually suppressed the practice of 

 cremation. In India it is still a usual method for 

 disposing of corpses, and is also practised by numer- 

 ous uncivilised peoples of Asia and America (see 

 BURIAL). A return to the practice has been 

 strongly insisted on by many in modern Europe. 

 This is opposed mainly on grounds of kindly feeling 

 for the dead, and for religious reasons connected 

 with the belief in the resurrection of the dead. 

 Advocates of cremation assert that these are pre- 

 judices founded on misapprehension, and allege 

 that the question is solely a sanitary one. The 

 damage to the health of such as live near church- 

 yards and cemeteries, from the exhalations of 

 noxious gases and the poisoning of water supplies, 

 is an indisputable fact, and is in many cases quite 

 inevitable. By burning, the body is reduced more 

 swiftly to its constituent elements, without disre- 

 spect to the dead or hurt to the living. The ashes 

 of the body of an adult after due incineration weigh 

 from 5 to 7 lb. Others allege as the juridico- 

 criminal difficulty that cremation might be made 

 to destroy the evidence of murder ( as by poison- 

 ing); but advocates of cremation answer that a 

 properly organised system of medical inspection 

 would obviate this objection. In Italy cremation 

 has been legal since 1877, and is not unusual at 

 Milan, Lodi, Cremona, Brescia, Padua, Varese, and 

 Rome, and at these places crematory furnaces, on 

 the Gorini system, have been erected. About 1000 

 cremations have taken place in these and other 

 Italian towns. In Berlin, Dresden, and Leipzig 

 there has been strong agitation in favour of crema- 

 tion ; and at Gotha there is a large mortuary and 

 crematorium, where between 1878 and 1888 more 

 than 550 bodies had been cremated and lodged in 

 the Columbaria of the crematory temple. Societies 

 for securing the legalisation of the process exist in 

 nearly every country in Europe, and in some the 

 rite of cremation is permissible. At present this 

 is not so in Belgium, Russia, or Austria. Two 

 crematory furnaces were erected in 1888 by the 

 municipality of Paris at Pere-la-Chaise. The move- 

 ment found for long but little favour in the United 



States ; there were but 20 cremations in 1875-82, 

 but in 1885-93, 1282 bodies were cremated. Interest 

 in this movement was awakened in England in 

 1874 by Sir Henry Thompson : the council of the 

 society established in that year purchased ground 

 at Woking, and in 1885 erected a crematory, 

 which by 1893 had cremated 458 bodies. The 

 number of cremations in England is now 130 

 annually. There are crematories at Manchester, 

 Glasgow, and elsewhere. For each cremation about 

 seven shillings' worth of wood fagots and coal are 

 needed. The time occupied in the reduction of an 

 adult varies from 1 to If hours, and the ashes 

 weigh, as before stated, from 5 to 7 lb. Cremation 

 having been declared legal in England, it is expected 

 that some of the large cities will very shortly possess 

 these media for destruction of the body by fire. 

 The human body consists of 60 per cent, of water 

 and 40 per cent, of solid matter ; and quickly to 

 reduce this to ashes requires a strong furnace. A 

 special form of Siemens' regenerator furnace is that 

 which has found most favour in Germany, but 

 elsewhere only the Gorini form of apparatus is used. 

 The Gorini crematory furnace consists of a receiver, 

 a furnace, and a chimney. The receiver is a flat- 

 bottomed chamber open at each end, one of which 

 communicates with the upper part of the furnace, 

 and the other with the lower part of the chimney. 

 The furnace, which discharges its heat into the 

 receiver, is somewhat spacious, sufficiently so to 

 produce the necessary heat by means of wood fuel 

 only if found requisite. The chimney is also of 

 sufficient sectional area to remove the products of 

 combustion from the receiver as well as the fur- 

 nace, and high enough to permit the draught to 

 keep above the gases pervading the receiver, and 

 prevent any dispersion of heat or smoke through 

 the apertures around the receiver or cremation 

 chamber. In order to perfectly overcome the idea 

 as to any organic molecules escaping from the 

 shaft, a grating is placed near the base of the 

 chimney, and upon this a portion of coke is kept 

 burning. The products of animal combustion which 

 issue still highly heated from the receiver, are sub- 

 jected to higner temperature in passing through the 

 burning coke, and any organic matter which may 

 have resisted or escaped the first combustion i& 

 destroyed by the second, and mixes harmlessly with 

 the atmosphere. The literature of the subject 

 began with Thompson's Treatment of the Body 

 after Death ( 1874) ; Erichsen's Cremation of the Dead 

 (1887) ; Ullersperger's Urne oder Grab (1874) ; and 

 some works by Italian doctors. The Transactions 

 ( annual ) of the Cremation Society of England con- 

 tain a complete bibliography on the subject up- 

 to date. Since 1874 upwards of 3000 Avorks and 

 pamphlets have been published on this subject in 

 various countries. 



[While this volume was passing through the press,, 

 the author of the above article died, and his body was 

 cremated at Woking. ED.] 



Cre"mieux, ISAAC ADOLPHE, jurist and poli- 

 tician, was born of Jewish parents at Nimes, 30th 

 April 1796, and became an advocate in Paris in 

 1830. In 1842 he entered the Chamber, and in 

 1848 was a member of the provisional government. 

 Imprisoned at the coup d'etat, he subsequently 

 confined himself to professional work, till 1870, 

 when he was a member of the government of 

 national defence. He was made a senator in 1876, 

 and died 10th February 1880. He was the founder 

 of the Alliance Israelite Universelle. 



Cremona, a decayed city of Northern Italy, 

 on the north bank of the Po, 60 miles SE. of 

 Milan by rail, and 46 E. of Pavia. Cremona has- 

 some fine buildings the principal the cathedral 

 (1107-1606), with gorgeous interior; the neigh- 



