In a similar manner should be treated the whole of the meat seized as unfit for food. In Gloucester, some years ago, and when the mayor had no power to fine the vendors of bad butchers' meat, the carcases were, it is said, destroyed by fire outside the city wall. Would that such jurisdiction existed now! In the metropolis alone, thousands of tons of animal food are yearly condemned, to say nothing of fruit and vegetables. The State should burn these up with even more alacrity than contraband of custom. And the purification by fire might be even extended to the humblest things. It has been said that the lower animals which perish in our midst must perforce send thousands of pounds of mephitic vapour daily into the air, if left unburnt.[42] It is not necessary to enumerate what else it would be desirable to destroy in this way. They can be seen in nearly every river, canal, and pond, in every ditch, gutter, and even street. [42] Frazer. Medical men are the chief exponents of the good results which will follow the adoption of cremation, and with one exception the whole of the foreign writers upon the subject are professors of some branch of medical science. It is the same in our own country.[43] [43] The last public utterance was made by Dr. Wheelhouse, of Leeds, in his address of October in the present year. He says:-- 'Do we not shun, and that most wisely, the presence of those afflicted with infectious diseases so long as they remain amongst us; and yet, no sooner are they removed by death, than we are content, with tender sympathy indeed, and most loving care it is true (but with how much wisdom?), to lay them in the ground that they may slowly dissipate their terribly infectious gases through the soil, and saturating that, may thereby recharge the rains of heaven, as they filter through it, with all their virulence and terrible power of reproduction in the systems of the living. I am not the thorough and entire believer in the disinfecting and depurating power of the soil that I once was; for terrible examples of its failure have, in my judgment, come under my notice. 'Sir Henry Thompson has lately sounded a note of alarm on this subject; and though, for the present, it may fall upon ears unheeding or unsympathetic, I yet venture to think that, in time to come, his warning will be enforced by stern necessity, and that some better method of disposing of our dead will take the place of the burial so honoured and revered by us.' CHAPTER II. METHODS OF TREATING THE DEAD.