WORMS SHALL EAT OUR BODIES AFTER BURIAL 205 



mal grave is sunk, that is, six feet. So that no one need 

 fear that he will fall a prey to the ordinary garden or earth 

 worm. 



That an uncared-for corpse, left exposed on a summer 

 day, would soon be flyblown and that the eggs deposited 

 by the flies would develop into larvae which would soon 

 devour the body, is quite true. Linnaeus tells us that the 

 progeny of three blowflies would devour the carcass of an 

 ox as quickly as would a lion. So that it is pretty certain 

 that they would make quick work with an unprotected 

 corpse. But such a condition never occurs in civilized 

 life where death takes place amongst relatives and friends. 



But while we do not stand in much danger of being 

 eaten by earthworms or the larvae of insects, it is very 

 certain that every man carries into his grave those devour- 

 ing agents which though invisible to ordinary sight will 

 accomplish the destruction of his body quite as effectually 

 as could those grosser creatures of which so many stand 

 in dread. Unless destroyed by powerful embalming 

 agents the microbes which cause putrefaction and which 

 are always present in inconceivable numbers will sooner 

 or later cause the materials of this worn-out garment 

 which we call our body to return to the elements whence 

 they came. From birth to death we have been contin- 

 ually borrowing, continually paying back. Part of our 

 physical organization may have come from the fruits 

 of the tropics, part from the mosses and lichens of the 

 frozen north. We may hold in our bones, muscles, and 

 brains, materials which once formed part of the gentle 

 sheep or the ravenous wolf, and in all the millions of years 

 during which the composition and decomposition of organic 

 matter has gone on, it is quite probable that some portion 



