Were cremation practised now-a-days in times of warfare, and with our improved appliances, there would be no costly monuments to be kept up by the invaders, such as we now jealously maintain on the heights of Sebastopol[38]--nothing be left behind to recall a strife best forgotten. The ashes of our warrior dead could even be brought home to lie in the fatherland. When Nestor recommended the bodies of the slain Achæans to be burnt close to the ships, in order that the survivors might be able to carry home the bones, and raise over them a common tomb,[39] he proved himself much wiser than our generation. [38] The commissioners sent to report upon the state of the English graveyards in the year 1872 found no less than 130 cemeteries occupied by our dead. Forty-five of them contained no monuments, and 65 only headstones of the commonest kind. The French had gathered together some 28,000 of _their_ dead, and formed one large _campo santo_. The English commission reported that it would require 5,000_l._ to put the graveyards in seemly order, and an annual expenditure of some 200_l._ more. It appears that the graves have been frequently rifled by the Tartar peasantry in search of rings and other valuables. See 'Daily Telegraph,' Oct. 30, 1874. [39] 'Iliad.' The general adverse feeling to burning even the dead bodies of animals at the present day, has without doubt often brought about serious evils. During the Crimean war the putrefaction of numberless horses in and around the French camps became ultimately a serious matter,[40] and had they been destroyed by fire no evil effects could have followed. Why were they not destroyed by fire?--for fear of offending the prejudices of their allies? For one reads that in the battle of Paris, on March 30, 1814, 4,000 horses which were killed, were burnt twelve days afterwards. It is doubtful, too, whether or not the removal of diseased cattle from our midst by burial only, is sufficient to stamp out a very virulent plague. I find that during the great plague of 1865, in Great Britain alone 132,000 cattle were attacked; 17,368 of which were killed, and 81,368 of which died.[41] Had a few hecatombs been slain and burnt at the commencement of the visitation, or had the initial thousand of sickly ones been slain and consumed by fire in Russia, the steppe murrain would have been speedily stamped out. [40] Dr. Parkes. [41] Gamgee on the 'Cattle Plague.'