puzzling; for instance, the triple treatment of the Singpho people, who embalm, burn, and bury in rotation. The bodies are first of all dried in coffins made for the purpose, whereupon the mummy is burnt, the ashes being deposited in mounds, which last are eventually covered over with conical roofs.[81] [76] Elliot. [77] Major Godwin-Austen. [78] St. A. St. John. [79] Professor Le Conte. [80] Chapman. [81] Griffiths. Many other strange matters connected with mortuary observances, incomprehensible I am afraid at present, would confront the student of burial customs. Why, for instance, should the Greeks who burnt their dead place in the tomb vases and other things esteemed by the deceased?[82] and why do we find the same practice in vogue as far off as Madagascar, where they do not burn their dead?[83] Why also should the Scythians of old have burnt the body, and also the chattels of the deceased?[84] Why should the Patagonians of to-day bury the body and burn the chattels,[85] and the Shan-doo tribes of Aracan, where cremation is common, burn neither and bury both?[86] Or if these questions are easily answered, why, if not for sanitary reasons, should any people have gone to the trouble and expense of cremation, when exposure or burial in the earth was so easy to perform and absolutely costless?[87] [82] Vitruvius. [83] Dr. Oliver. [84] Herodotus. [85] Journal Anth. Inst. [86] St. A. St. John. [87] In ancient Greece, unteethed infants, suicides, and lightning-stricken people, were forbidden the _privileges_ of cremation.