DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 597 



system of a crowded country. Nature will have it so, whether we 

 like it or not. She destines the material elements of my body to enter 

 the vegetable world on purpose to supply another animal organism 

 which takes my place. She wants me, and I must go. There is no 

 help for it. When shall I follow — with quick obedience, or unwill- 

 ingly, truant-like, traitor-like, to her and her grand design? Her 

 capital is intended to bear good interest and to yield quick return ; 

 all her ways prove it — " increase and multiply " is her first and con- 

 stant law. Shall her riches be hid in earth to corrupt and bear no 

 present fruit, or be utilized, without loss of time, value, and interest, 

 for the benefit of starving survivors ? Nature hides no talent in a 

 napkin ; we, her unprofitable servants only, thwart her ways and 

 delay the consummation of her will. 



Is a practical illustration required ? Nothing is easier. London 

 was computed, by the census of 1871, to contain 3,254,260 persons, of 

 whom 80,430 died within the year. I have come to the conclusion, 

 after a very carefully-made estimate, that the amount of ashes and 

 bone-earth — such as is derived by perfect combustion — belonging to 

 and buried with those persons, is by weight about 206,820 pounds. 

 The pecuniary value of this highly-concentrated form of animal solids 

 is very considerable. For this bone-earth may be regarded as equiva- 

 lent to at least six or seven times its weight of dried but unburned 

 bones, as they ordinarily exist in commerce. The amount of other 

 solid matters resolvable by burning into the gaseous food of plants, 

 but rendered unavailable by burial for, say fifty or a hundred years or 

 more, is about 5,584,000 pounds, the value of which is quite incalcu- 

 lable, but it is certainly enormous as compared with the preceding. 



This is for the population of the metropolis only; that of the 

 United Kingdom for the same year amounted to 31,483,700 persons, 

 or nearly ten times the population of London. Taking into considera- 

 tion a somewhat lower death-rate for the imperial average, it will at 

 all events be quite within the limit of truthful statement to multiply 

 the above quantities by nine in order to obtain the amount of valuable 

 economic material annually diverted in the United Kingdom, for a 

 long term of years, from its ultimate destiny by our present method 

 of interment. 



The necessary complement of this ceaseless waste of commodity 

 most precious to organic life, and which must be replaced, or the pop- 

 ulation could not exist, is the purchase by this country of that same 

 material from other countries less populous than our own, and which 

 can, therefore, at present spare it. This we do to the amount of much 

 more than half a million pounds sterling per annum. 1 



Few persons, I believe, have any notion that these importations 



1 Value of bones imported into the United Kingdom, of which by far the larger part 

 is employed for manure, has been in 1866, £409,590; 1869, £600,029 ; 1872, £753,185. 

 — Statistical Abstract, No. 20. — Spottiswoode, 1873. 



