§ 215. As an instance of the incompatibility of such duties as those of the proposed officer of public health, with service in connexion with any existing local administrative body, it may be mentioned that every local Board in such a town as Sheffield would comprehend some of the chief householders, who would most probably be the chief manufacturers and employers of the class of workmen, and that even the official connexion would to such minds as the workmen expose him to suspicion, and diminish his influence, for the effectuation of any voluntary changes of practice. On other grounds, such as the absence of qualification in such Boards to give superior directions; and such grounds as those specified in p. 322 and p. 349 and 350 of the General Report, it is submitted that the functions of the officer of health would be the best exercised, independently of any other local administrative body. He would, in an independent capacity, be the most powerful auxiliary of any well-intended and zealous administration of local works, and as his functions must bring him at once to the chief spots where the consequences of neglects and omissions would be often manifest in fatal events, he would, as an independent and yet responsible officer, exercise an extensive influence and an efficient check on behalf of the public at large. § 216. Every efficient measure of improvement of the sanitary condition of the population, must be in its mere pecuniary results a measure of a large economy (§ 80). Physicians and medical officers are of opinion that all the ordinary and extraordinary duties specified, and even more, may be done by an officer of health with the same average expenditure of time (taking one case with another), that occurs to a physician in visiting a patient, examining the case, writing out a prescription and giving instructions to attendants. I shall be able to show that it may be accomplished at a charge no greater than that now paid by the labouring classes to one of their body as a steward or officer of their burial clubs who is required to inspect and identify the body of a deceased member. _Proximate Estimate of the comparative Expense of Interments under arrangements for National Cemeteries._ Having shown the chief desiderata in respect to the improvement of the practice of interment, and the means of protecting the public health, I proceed to submit the substance of the information collected as to the means of obtaining them.