Briefer Articles. 113 
its products, do not appear to encourage the prosecution of the 
industry as an independent branch of business. According to 
recently published reports on the subject, it has been ascertained 
that the cultivation of the plant for sugar and syrup does not pay. 
The cost of machinery and the difficulty of obtaining that which 
is especially suited for the purpose, the high cost of skilled labor 
required for the success of all departments of the work, and the 
difficulty of finding a market for the necessarily crude product, 
are likely to-prove obstacles that the ordinary farmer will not 
readily overcome. Kansas, which is one of the leading States in 
sorghum raising, reports for last year a yield of about ten tons 
per acre, for which growers received tendollars per ton delivered 
at the factories. This gives but a small margin of profits; indeed, 
none at all, if labor must be hired. Experts are, however, of the 
opinion that there is a future for sorghum, and that with new 
and improved machinery its culture may be made profitable. 
DESICCATION OF THE DEAD.—A unique plan for the dispos- 
ition of the dead, with reference to the preservation of evidence 
in capital criminal cases, was recently laid before the Medico- 
Legal Convention. This system consists of a scientific process 
of desiccation by which the tissues are deprived of moisture and 
kept in a state of complete preservation, and in a condition 
which renders a critical examination and a chemical analysis of 
them at anytime asimpleand easy matter. The bodiesare to belaid 
away in sepulchers arranged in tiers and rows in a great mauso- 
leum, with more or less privacy, according to cost, each body to 
be perfectly accessible at all times. The sepulchers will each 
have one opening for admitting the body. In this there will be 
a plate-glass door, and, outside, a marble or metal door for 
safety. When the outer door is open the body may be seen, 
without discoloration or decay, but of course exceedingly emaci- 
ated. The preservation of the body is affected by means of a 
current of dry air passing through conduits formed in the con- 
crete of which the sepulchers are composed, which bring the dry 
air into the sepulcher at one end, while at the other the air-cur- 
rent passes out laden with gases and moistures of the body which 
are carried to a furnace and consumed, so that no deleterious 
gases or offensive odors can escape to the outer air. A moder- 
ate current of such dry air accomplishes the desired purpose in 
about ninety days. After the work is finished, the conduits are 
hermetically closed; oxidization and decomposition are prevent- 
ed, and the body remains in view through the glass door. This 
mode of disposing of the dead avoids allthe unpleasant features of 
earth burial and its attendant unsanitary evils through poisioning 
the earth and water and storing disease geims to break out in fu- 
ture epidemics. The Mausoleum System, as the projectors call it, 
meets all the objections which cremationists urge against burial, 
and also meets the objections to cremation, by the preserva- 
