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SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[Dec. 28, if 



The State of our Cemeteries. — Sir Spencer Wells 

 in opening a discussion on " Cremation," in the large hall 

 of Sion College, showed that our cemeteries are now 

 little, if any, better than the old churchyards against 

 which Dr. Thomas Walker waged such a long and 

 arduous war. He said : " The present condition of many 

 cemeteries is shocking and revolting — bodies festering in 

 a slough of corruption, while others are covered only 

 with a few inches of earth. The Brompton Cemetery, 

 surrounded on every side by the dwellings of the living, 

 was bought by the Government in 1853, ostensibly for 

 the purpose of closing, but since then it has been receiv- 

 ing more than 5,000 bodies annually. The present state 

 may be more ^'easily imagined than described. In the 

 Tower Hamlets Cemetery it is alleged that as many as 

 1,053 children's bodies have been packed in seventeen 

 trenches, and in one instance sixty bodies in one trench, 

 which remained open until it was over-filled. It has 

 frequently been found necessary to bail out the liquid 

 corruption ; and owing to the foul stench the workmen 

 engaged have been taken out of the trenches in a faint- 

 ing condition. In the Wolverhampton Cemetery the 

 common graves are kept open from day to day until 

 quite filled. In the Ardwick Cemetery, Manchester, 

 with a very small acreage, 70,000 bodies have been 

 interred. The dead lie in what are practically wide 

 trenches with about 18 inches of earth between each. 

 In Glasgow the system of pit burial is generally adopted, 

 and goes on, although it has been denounced by the 

 .medical officer of health as dangerous to the public, and a 

 gross breach of decency." 



The Protest against Examinationism in Education. 

 — The growing conviction that competitive examinations 

 are a ruinous failure has found able and authoritative 

 expression in the November issue of the Nineteenth 

 Century. In that issue we find " the strong protest 

 of the signers against the dangerous mental pressure and 

 misdirection of energies and aims which are to be found 

 alike in nearly all parts of our educational system. Alike 

 in public elementary schools, in schools of all grades 

 and for all classes, and at the universities, the same 

 dangers are too often showing themselves under different 

 forms. Children are treated by a public department, by 

 managers and schoolmasters, as suitable instruments for 

 earning Government grants ; boys of the middle and 

 richer class are often trained for scholarships with as 

 little regard for the future as two-year-old horses are 

 trained for races ; and young men of real capability at 

 the universities are led to believe that the main purpose 

 of education is to enable them to win some great money 

 prize or take some distinguished place in an examination. 

 We protest most emphatically against such a misdirection 

 of education, and against the evils which necessarily arise 

 from it." This document has been signed by hundreds 

 of the most thoughtful and influential persons in Britain , 

 — men widely differing, or even mutually hostile on per- 

 haps every other subject, but here joining in a protest 

 against a system which, if persisted in, must reduce us 

 to intellectual ossification. Professor Max Miiller, com- 

 menting on this document, admits that he was, forty 

 years ago, an eager advocate of the system of Civil Ser- 

 vice examinations. He now frankly owns his mistake, 

 and admits that the fault has been, not with the "applica- 

 tion of the principle of examination, but with examination 

 itself. Mr. Frederic Harrison thinks that " examination, 

 having been called in to aid education, has grown and 



hardened into the master of education. Education is 

 becoming the slave of its own creature and servant. 

 Like all servants turned masters, it is now bullying, 

 spoiling, and humiliating education." 



The Last Explorations of M. de Brettes. — M. de 

 Brettes, of whose early travels in the Grand Chaco to 

 the south of the Rio Vermejo a brief account has already 

 appeared in these columns, has just returned to Paris 

 Irom a second expedition, with reference to which he 

 furnishes some interesting particulars to the Journal des 

 Debats. Having started from France in May, 1886, en- 

 trusted with a mission by the Minister of Public In- 

 struction, he was detained b3' difficulties of one kind and 

 another upon American soil for sixteen months, and pre- 

 vented from penetrating into the Chaco. He did not, 

 however, allow this time to be wasted, for he purchased 

 a yacht, and, with the help of a French engineer, M. de 

 Boisvier, he completed the hydrographical survey of the 

 Lake Ypa-Carai which had been commenced twenty- 

 seven years before by the English engineers Burrell and 

 Valpy, but interrupted by the Paraguay war in 1864. 

 At the instigation of the Consul of Bolivia, M. de Brettes 

 then entered the Chaco for the second time (October 13th, 

 1887), starting from Apa, on the frontiers of Brazil, and 

 making for Baranquerita (the Northern Chaco). His 

 escort then consisted of fifty Guana Indians and a single 

 native of Paraguay who had resolved to accompany him, 

 and who was nicknamed accordingly by his compatriots 

 " Guapo " (the brave man). But this brave man soon 

 took fright, and fled back to Apa half dead with terror. 

 M. de Brettes then travelled through the territory of 

 the Guana Indians, who were then at war with their 

 mortal enemies the Chamacocas, and he was himself 

 attacked by this tribe and slightly wounded. He 

 continued his march westwards for six days, suffering 

 terribly from thirst, and he at last reached Bolivian 

 territory, ten days' march from Pilcomoyo, having gone 

 through the hitherto unexplored territories of the Guanas, 

 the Kamananghas, the Baughis, the Neennsemahas, and 

 the Aksseks. During the whole of this difficult march 

 he did not fail to take note of all the important geo- 

 graphical positions, and thus, for instance, he followed 

 for upwards of 70 miles a senda (Indian path) which 

 leads from the Rio Parguay to Bolivia across the Chaco. 

 This was the knotty point of the problem, and M. de 

 Brettes further ascertained that this senda runs through 

 a perfectly flat country, and that there would be no diffi- 

 culty in clearing the road which Bolivia so much desires 

 to make. He also came upon some very curious brick ruins 

 to the right ot this Indian tract in latitude 2i Q 48' south, 

 longitude 63 07' west meridian of Paris. The Indians 

 who accompanied him said that beneath the round monu- 

 ments like low towers, which M. de Brettes saw, were 

 tombs, but he was unable to verify this, though he ex- 

 tracted from some of the cavities in the ground some fine 

 specimens of pottery similar to those found in the tombs 

 of the Aymaras of Bolivia, whence M. de Brettes con- 

 cludes that the Incas' dominion must have extended far 

 beyond the Andes. Among the pieces of pottery which 

 he has brought back is a duplicate of what M. Jacque- 

 mart describes as the chef dauvre of American pottery, 

 a vase which is now in the Louvre. In addition to the 

 potteries of the Incas his collection comprises Guanas and 

 Chamacocas vases of modern manufacture and a great 

 number of Indian articles, such as violins, costumes made 

 of feathers, necklaces of all kinds, and arms. 



