It might be fairer to the pathologists were they to receive a fixed remuneration per annum, irrespective of the number of bodies subjected to scrutiny or to internal examination. The remuneration could be based on yearly averages, when the perfectly natural incentive for an extra two guineas would be absent in deciding them in favour of a _post mortem_ or against the necessity for it. It is not suggested that a reputable pathologist would be much influenced by a trifling fee, but where he is to receive payment for doing a thing, and nothing for not doing it, he perforce does it. Then, too, where a person has the power to decide whether or not the carrying out of a _post mortem_ is necessary, there is a tendency for him to give more attention to all the various circumstances of the death than he might otherwise feel himself obliged to do. A highly qualified man, with the power of independent judgment, does not deliberately set himself a task unless he believes its performance to be essential. By giving some such power to the “medical investigators or pathologists,” a great deal of superfluous work would be saved. The question of reducing every coroner to a fixed salary--_i.e._, a salary not dependent on the number of dead bodies on which inquests are held--would be a further advantage both to the coroners and to the community. The system of so much per head per corpse is obsolete; if it is not exactly obsolete, it ought to be so. The second part of the Coroners’ Law and Death Certification (Amendment) Bill is concerned with questions of death certification and burial. Section 16 of the Bill, which is the first in Part II., sets out that “No death shall be registered under the Registration Acts without the delivery to the registrar of a certificate of death duly signed by a registered medical practitioner, or by a coroner, after holding an inquiry or inquest.” The next section goes on to say that, “Before giving a certificate of death, a registered medical practitioner shall personally inspect the body and identify it as the body of the person named in the certificate whom he has attended during his last illness, and shall _certify to the fact of death as well as to its cause_.” (The italics do not appear in the Bill.) Sections 18 and 19 are uninteresting, merely containing, as they do, particulars of the form of death certificates and the method of filing the same. Section 20. (1) “When the registered medical practitioner who attended a person during his last illness is unable to give a certificate of death, he shall forthwith notify to the coroner the fact of such death with the reasons for his inability to give such certificate.” (2) “When no registered medical practitioner has attended the deceased person during his last illness, the relatives, friends, or other persons having cognizance of the death, or of any doubtful or suspicious circumstances attending the death, shall themselves report full particulars thereof to the coroner.”