Section 23. “Every person who shall bury or otherwise dispose of any dead body shall certify, by endorsement of the burial order (which endorsement shall be in the form set forth in the Second Schedule to this Act), the name of the place, the date, and the mode of burial, or other mode of disposal of the dead body, and shall send such order to the registrar of deaths in whose district the death was registered within five days after such burial or other disposal of the dead body. Such certificate shall, together with the certificate of death, or finding of the coroner after inquiry, or verdict after inquest, as the case may be, be entered in a book kept for the purpose, to be called the ‘register of deaths and burials.’” Then follow penalties for non-compliance with the regulations specified. Section 24. “No person responsible for the burial or other disposition of any dead body shall retain the same, or delay the burial or other disposition of the same for any longer period than eight days after death, except with the previous written consent of a justice of the peace. Before giving this consent such justice shall be satisfied that such retention or delay is reasonable, and the consent shall state the period and grounds of such retention or delay. Any person who fails to comply with the provisions of this section shall, on summary conviction, be liable to a fine not exceeding _five pounds_ for every day during which he fails to comply as aforesaid.” Part III. contains one important provision. “Any dead child which has issued forth from its mother after the expiration of the twenty-eighth week of pregnancy, whether alive or dead, shall be the dead body of a person within the meaning of the Coroners’ Act, 1887, and this Act, and a person within the meaning of the Births and Deaths Registration Act, 1874.” By the foregoing extracts from the new Bill, it will be seen that a greater attention is to be paid to establishing _the fact of death_, something which hitherto has been left to be implied from the nature of the certificate. The intention of the provision is, of course, excellent. It may even help to abate the nervousness of persons who go in dread of burial alive. But its practical value will be dependent on the precautions taken by the individual medical practitioner in his examination of the corpse. The routine of examining dead bodies becomes as commonplace as any other routine, and it might not be a bad policy to include a provision for a definite test by which the medical practitioner could finally _prove the fact of death_.