410 ADDITIONAL PHENOMENA OF NATURAL MAGIC. 



away with interment altogether to avoid suffering the 

 horror of suffocation in the tonib. This kind of death, it 

 is idle to deny, has a character of horror for the human 

 mind, the metaphysical associations of which invest it 

 with an ideal, but not on that account the less a real 

 agony, eminently beyond every other conceivable form of 

 terminating our mortality. That instances well authen- 

 ticated of people being buried alive under misapprehension 

 have occurred cannot be gainsayed, and a circumstance 

 was brought before public attention not many years ago 

 which appeared to support the idea that this was much 

 more common than was usually suspected, for it was found 

 on opening many tombs for the purposes of subsequent 

 interments in the same place that the faces of the parties 

 previously interred were generally found turned downward. 

 This was concluded to be evidence of the persons having 

 awoke in the grave after their interment, and in their 

 helpless and hopeless struggles for relief turning round 

 upon their faces, and dying under these dark circum- 

 stances in despair. Fortunately a more careful investiga- 

 tion of the facts satisfactorily dispelled this truly horrible 

 impression. It was found that, though the skull was face 

 downward, it was not until decay had so far progressed 

 as to effect separation of the vertebrae of the neck that it 

 was so, and that the rest of the skeleton still remained 

 upon its back. This fact was utterly at variance with 

 the idea of the person having become alive in the tomb 

 and afterwards dying of suffocation, because the position 

 of the face downwards, and the body on its back, was 

 impossible as a result of voluntary action which any one 

 may prove by attempting to turn the head round so as 

 to see directly behind him while retaining the breast 

 in the opposite direction ; and a little further investiga- 

 tion showed that the skull when separated by decay from 

 the neck could not balance itself on the back of the head. 



