714 27 le Cremation Question . [December, 
Hence, at any given moment, we have around us not merely 
3000, but 30,000 tons of dangerous matter. 
Some authorities, indeed, contend that the superstratum 
of earth is a sure safeguard against the escape of any harm- 
ful matter from the putrefying corpse below. Whilst fully 
admitting the great absorbing and purifying quality of the 
• soil, I can see here no pledge of absolute safety. I have in 
more than one of our cemeteries, in calm, weather, detected 
an unholy smell, though were I to give full particulars I 
should doubtless find to my cost that “ the greater the truth 
the greater the libel.” I have recognised the same un- 
pleasant odour in dull, damp, autumnal evenings, even 
outside the fences. But, what is much more to the purpose, 
M. Pasteur, in the course of his prolonged and admirable 
researches on the propagation of zymotic disease, has no- 
ticed that sheep, grazing on ground where victims of the 
cattle-plague had been buried, became infected. He sug- 
gests that earth-worms bring up the morbific matter to the 
surface. When once there it may easily be disseminated by 
those ubiquitous colporteurs of disease, the flies. M. Pasteur 
proposes that cattle which have died of anthrax should be 
buried not in clayey ground, but in calcareous soils, where 
earth-worms are rare. Unfortunately such soils are scarce 
in Middlesex. 
But to return : if the bodies of oxen, buried beneath ij or 
2 yards of clay, may still impart disease to creatures feeding 
or resting on the surface of the ground, there is good reason 
to fear that human remains will be in like manner hurtful. 
We have therefore no shadow of reason for expecting that 
the neighbourhood of our cemeteries, when once fairly 
“ built in,” will be healthy. 
What, then, are we to do ? We cannot set bounds to the 
spread of London, or enadt that no house shall be built 
within a given distance of the cemeteries. If we did so 
decree our task would be endless, for the abodes of the 
dead, like the dwellings of the living, constantly require 
extension. If houses do not come to the cemetery, it will 
come to the houses. 
Indeed, if we leave the prospedt of nuisance entirely on 
one side, we shall find here, in the mere necessity for the 
constant enlargement of our burial-grounds, a difficulty of no 
trifling weight. Can we, as a nation, afford to withdraw a 
constantly increasing portion of our most valuable lands for 
ever from all remunerative purposes ? We are justly dissa- 
tisfied when we see acres of land covered with the “ spoil- 
banks ” of the coal-owner, the slag-mounds of the iron-master , 
