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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
limited periods of time, there would he demanded a modifica- 
tion of the present plan of planting the surface of the cemetery 
with trees and evergreens. To surround the place with trees 
not too thickly planted, to plant small and handsome trees in 
different parts of the ground by the side-walks and in odd spots 
where the earth remains undisturbed would be unobjectionable. 
The rugged elms and yew-tree’s shade might still encircle the 
homes of the dead ; but inasmuch as the earth in which the 
burials are made is to be a moveable earth, it would be impos- 
sible, except in particular instances — of which a word must yet 
be spoken- — to plant over any one body any special and lasting 
tree or shrub. The ground levelled at once after burial should 
be covered with rapidly-growing vegetation, such quick- 
growing grasses which can be mown and utilized either as 
food for the laborious animals or as manure for other land. 
Thus the products of decomposition from the dead, which by 
diffusion would find their way to the surface, would be removed 
by their transformation into new forms of matter as rapidly as 
they were evolved and distributed. 
The last modification, under a new and more perfect system 
of burial, relates to the records of the dead : the tablets and 
tombs and tombstones which affectionate relatives place over 
those they love. How transitory these records are can hardly be 
accredited until, with watchful intent, the unprejudiced observer 
seeks for the truth. In scanning our country churchyards it is 
the rarest thing in the world to find a perfectly legible tomb- 
stone erected over a grave of one hundred years. Numbers are 
either illegible or fail to mark the precise place of burial at 
twenty years, and few are tended or preserved over five to ten 
years. 
Practically, in fact, the monumental system of record is fast 
going out, and under a new and better system it would have 
to pass away altogether. The tablet might remain in a 
central temple without the cemetery. It might record that 
within the precincts the body buried there was on a certain day 
committed to the dust. The inscriptive description of the 
dead might, as usual, be rendered, and the tablet, being under 
shelter, would be advantageously placed for endurance. Beyond 
this the monumental brass or stone could not go. To place it 
over the body of the entombed, or at the head or at the foot of 
the dead, as a permanency, would be destructive to the whole 
scheme of perfect burial. Over the dead nothing more must be 
placed than a simple mark, which at the close of the term, 
when the earth is removed and replaced, would also be removed 
and destroyed. The body is no longer there ; it has passed 
into new forms of matter ; the stone therefore, if it remained 
telling that the body was still there, would be a mere cheat. 
