1870.] Be Mortuis. 341 



chance of success for compensation for proved loss by noxious 

 vapours; or enable birn to apportion his claim among several 

 works, in proportion to their places in the list and their relative 

 distance from his land. 



Thus in place of the goading influence of a few isolated and 

 sudden prosecutions, a gradual pressure onwards would be felt, a 

 constant stimulus to improvement. All chemical manufactures can- 

 not be embraced in the provisions of an extended Alkali Act until 

 for each separate noxious vapour a process of suppression can be 

 described, and a limit for its working defined. But with such an 

 arrangement as is here proposed, all noxious vapours without the 

 task of enumeration would be at once legislated for. If there are 

 several manufacturers carrying on the same processes in the same 

 district, and one of them by special ingenuity discovers some pro- 

 cess by which a large portion of the acid vapour he has hitherto 

 seot away may be condensed, he improves his place in the list, and 

 so enjoys immunity from actions for damage on the part of the 

 farmers. The other manufacturers would obviously be compelled 

 to follow him in the race of improvement. Thus all would be 

 brought up to the rank of the foremost, and there would be a con- 

 stant impulse to the manufacturer to reduce the noxious emanations 

 from his works within the smallest possible amount. 



Y. DE MOBTUIS. 



By Henry Woodward, F.G.S., F.Z.S., &c. 



In almost all countries, both among savage and civilized races, the 

 rites of sepulture have been looked upon as a debt so sacred that 

 those who neglected it were considered infamous. 



The Greeks and Romans believed so strongly in the importance 

 of this obligation that they considered it to be fatal to their admis- 

 sion into Elysium to neglect to do honour to the dead. 



Nor can the practice of honouring the dead be claimed by these 

 classical countries alone, for throughout Egypt, Palestine, Persia, 

 India, and China, are monuments of the most lasting and costly de- 

 scription raised to the mighty dead. 



That the more northern and western races of mankind possessed 

 the same traditions cannot be doubted, and although their monu- 

 ments are of a ruder character they display often avast amount of 

 labour in their construction, and an equal care for the departed 

 whose remains they were intended to preserve. 



On the rude but colossal " Megalithic Structures of the Channel 

 Islands, their History and Analogues," a very able and exhaustive 



