TOWERS OF SILENCE 



5851 



TOXICOLOGY 



are the grim buildings with their enormously 

 thick walls, the whole forming a stronghold 

 which could well have resisted an army. 



The oldest of the structures is the central 

 White Tower, built in the time of William the 

 Conqueror on the site of an earlier fortress, 

 dating, according to some authorities, from the 

 rule of Julius Caesar. Some of the early kings 

 of England held their court in the Tower, each 

 adding something to the fortifications; but it is 

 chiefly for its history as a prison that the great 

 group is interesting. Many distinguished pris- 

 oners were led forth from one or another of its 

 buildings to execution, and- a large number of 

 these, including Sir Thomas More, Anne Bol- 

 eyn, Lady Jane Grey and Catharine Howard, 

 lie buried in the Tower Chapel. Sir Roger 

 Casement, the leader of the Irish rebellion of 

 1916, was confined in this historic prison until 

 his execution. 



To-day, besides arms sufficient to fit out a 

 large army, the Tower contains the royal jewel 

 office, with its treasures of gold and precious 



THE TOWER OF LONDON 



stones. Visitors are admitted, and find much 

 to interest them, though the associations of the 

 place are almost uniformly tragic. 



Consult Harper's The Tower of London: For- 

 tress, Palace and Prison. 



TOWERS OF SILENCE, circular structures 

 of stone, brick or cement, about twenty or 

 thirty feet high and much greater in diameter, 

 erected by the fire worshipers of Persia and 

 the Parsees of India. They are followers of 

 Zoroaster, and do not believe in burial. In 

 these towers the bodies of the dead, exposed to 

 the sky, are placed upon grates -above deep 

 pits, into which the bones fall after vultures, 

 which constantly hover over them, have de- 

 voured the flesh. The ancient towers were rec- 

 tangular in shape, and in some the bodies were 

 placed upon stone slabs from which ducts led to 

 the pit. 



This method of disposing of the dead has 

 been practiced for over two thousand years, and 

 the custom is still observed by many who have 

 not yet adopted Christianity. There are about 



ONE OF THE TOWERS OF SILENCE 



94,000 Parsees in India, all but 7,000 of whom 

 live in and near Bombay, where there still re- 

 mains one of their towers of silence. It is 

 requiring energetic action on the part of the 

 English government to prevent the extension 

 and practice of this custom in India. 



TOWN MEETING, an annual assembly of 

 the voters in the New England township. In 

 its practical operation the township system is 

 the purest form of democratic government 

 known, because it is government by the people 

 themselves, not government by their elected 

 representatives. Once a year a town meeting is 

 held, which is attended by the male inhabitants 

 twenty-one years of age and over. At these 

 meetings selectmen, school officials and other 

 officers are elected, town laws are enacted, taxes 

 are voted for the coming year, and local im- 

 provements and other business matters are dis- 

 cussed and decided. A record of all business 

 transacted is made by the town clerk. The 

 township system is a typical New England in- 

 stitution. In the Southern and Western states 

 the administrative unit is the county, and in 

 some sections outside of New England one finds 

 a mixture of the two systems. The town meet- 

 ing as it is conducted in New England is a 

 survival of colonial days. 



TOXICOLOGY, toksikol'oji, from two 

 Greek words, toxikon, meaning poison, and 

 logia, meaning account, is the name applied to 

 that medical science which includes all sub- 

 jects relating to poisons. It treats of their 

 nature, effects, detection and antidotes, and the 

 legal questions which involve poisoning. For 



