CREMATION. 
241 
CREMATION.^ 
BY W. H. FRANCE. 
We have it on very old authority that “ there is nothing new under 
the sun;” and though from his ability to rearrange the forms and 
combinations of matter, presumptuous man is frequently tempted to 
exclaim, “ Here is something new,” all he can do is to transpose 
substances into new forms, as by the transposition of the alphabet, 
words of endless variety are produced. Though he use the 
earth as a ball on which to wind his telegraphs and railways, 
he works with nothing new, or which did not exist before his 
own form was evolved from pre-existent matter. He can facili¬ 
tate, and in some ways he can also retard, that which Nature is 
constantly doing, namely, changing the forms of matter by decompo¬ 
sition, not destruction. 
What is decomposition ? What is the agency which commences 
the operation and completes the process ? 
Tlie popular meaning attached to the word is an erroneous one, or 
at best is very remote from that of the word hurninp or combustion as 
applied to the consumption of fuel in our dwellings and manufactories; 
yet decomposition and combustion are one and the same thing, 
varying only in degree, or rapidity, or both. It is the result of heat, 
without which nothing can live ; nothing which, when dead, can again 
become food for the living ; without which those arteries of the earth 
—the rivers, circulating the blood of the earth, would cease to flow. 
But for it everything containing moisture would be locked in the 
rigidity of ice ; perfect cold being the normal condition of matter not 
subject to active heat. 
This is well illustrated in the Arctic regions, where, owing to the 
equatorial fulness of the earth’s form, the sun’s rays are intercepted ; 
and in proportion to such interception is the increase of cold, and a 
consequent decrease in the rapidity of decomposition or combustion of 
organic substances, so as almost to cease at times, as in the case of 
Arctic animals, which are occasionally found on thawing to be good 
food, though possibly they have been dead for many years. An arti¬ 
ficial application of this law of nature is now in regular use in the 
Paris Morgue, or temporary receptacle of the unknown dead, by 
which means there is a valuable suspension of natural decay or 
dissociation of the substances of the body. 
Where a perpetual state of ice does not exist, there decomposition 
fills up the intervals, the increase of the one being accompanied by 
the decrease of the other, until, as in the Tropics, decomposition reigns 
supreme, and there, as a consequence, life is more abundant. 
* Read before the Birmingham Natural History and Microscopical Society 
October 16,1883, 
