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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
forth the living. What changes she effects in the intervals of 
change are so perfect and so concealed that had she entirely 
her own way there were no more discernible offence in bury- 
ing a man than in planting a seed. What evils arise are 
due to the ceremonial we follow of partitioning the body from 
the earth in slowly-destructible investments of wood or of 
metal. 
The advantages of burial in the earth, when the process is 
correctly carried out, are, that of all methods it is most econo- 
mical and most simple. That it admits of being made a perfect 
protection to the living ; that it carries with it nothing that is 
repugnant to the mind at the time of disposal, and that in the 
economy of nature it allows her to have back the rich nitro- 
genous compound ammonia from which to reorganise the lower 
vegetable existences for the use of the higher forms of life which 
we call animal. On these grounds of absolute necessity the na- 
tural position is so strong, that we do not believe any human 
argument against it, however plausible it be, will prevail. To 
suppose so much is to admit that men may be at successful 
variance with the design of the universe, and still progress. The 
splendid allegory of the inferior spirits warring against their 
master and designing new plans of government in heaven and 
on earth, teaches that this idea of revising the natural ordin- 
ances is a conception doomed to fail by whomsoever tried. 
The disadvantages connected with the disposal of the body 
by the process of cremation are varied. In the first place, that 
the process should be safe it must be very perfect. To con- 
sume the dead body by fire slowly and by imperfect combustion 
would be but to create a veritable nuisance and a real danger, 
to say nothing of the disgust that would be excited by such 
procedure. To make the combustion perfect, a furnace of a 
special character must be employed in which, with the most 
rapid combustion, a period of one hour is required to reduce 
the adult body to ashes. Presuming the principle of cremation 
by this perfect method to be established, it remains doubtful 
whether, as a matter of economy, it would ever become uni- 
versally applicable in large populations. 
Another objection has been well raised by Dr. Mohr, based 
on the question of the natural economy. In the perfect de- 
struction of the animal by fire, Mohr shows that the tissues 
would be resolved into the elementary gases, and that no inter- 
mediate product of ammonia would be yielded. Thus this 
most indispensable product of nature, ammonia, would be lost 
so far to the vegetable world, and one of the grand designs of 
nature would be impaired. It were vain to say that this loss 
means little. It might mean little if cremation were to be in- 
