In his grand treatise on _Hydriotaphia_ or _Urn-burial_, which he wrote consequent upon the discovery of some ancient sepulchral urns at Old Walsingham, in Norfolk, he exemplifies the great stores of knowledge which by his reading and memory he had accumulated. He quaintly prefaces this treatise by saying, “Who knows the fate of his bones, or how often he is to be buried? Who hath the oracle of his ashes, or whither they are to be scattered?” And then he goes on to describe the various modes of disposal of the dead in various ages, and among different nations. For instance, he says that “Carnal interment or burying was of the elder date,” as shown by the older examples of Abraham and the Patriarchs. “But the practice of burning was also of great antiquity, and of no slender extent.” And he illustrates this by the Grecian funerals of Homer; the funeral pyre of Hector; and by early records of the practice in various countries of Asia, in Rome itself, and in different countries of both Europe and Africa. Touching the various modes of disposal of the dead, he says, “The Indian Brachmans thought it the noblest way to end their days in fire. “The Chaldeans abhorred fire. “The Egyptians objected to the merciless consuming of their bodies by fire, but preserved them, by precious embalments, depositure in dry earths, or handsome enclosure in glasses. “The Scythians, who swore by wind and sword, declined all interment, and made their graves in the air. “The Icthyophagi, or fish-eating nations about Egypt, affected the sea for their grave. “The Chinese, without cremation of their bodies, made use of trees, and much burning, while they plant a pine tree by their grave. “The Jews usually buried their dead, but occasionally admitted cremation, as when Jabesh burnt the body of Saul, and as was their practice in times of pestilence. “The Christians have preferred the practice of the Patriarchs, returning their bodies, not to ashes, but to dust.” He then goes on to discuss the various customs in this respect of the successive inhabitants of England; and he concludes his learned and interesting treatise by saying, as to the hopes of Christians, and the comparative unimportance of the mode of sepulture, “To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, . . . was large satisfaction unto old expectations. But all this is nothing in the metaphysicks of true belief. To live indeed is to be again ourselves, which being not only a hope, but an evidence in noble believers, ’tis all one to lie in St. Innocents’ Churchyard, or in the sands of Egypt. Ready to be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six foot (of earth) as the _Moles_ of Adrianus.” But I must hurry on, and next very briefly call your attention to another of his great works, that which he styled _Pseudodoxia Epidemica_, or “Enquiries into many received tenets and presumed truths, which, examined, prove but vulgar and common errors.”