When the necessity for cremation has once become a settled conviction with a people, nothing but the pressure of a conquering race or religion inimical to the practice will eradicate it. In parts of Madras where fuel is dear, the body is reduced to ashes with dried cow-dung and wood. In Siam, if poverty forbids immediate cremation, the body is first buried, and when the cost of the process can be borne, the body is disinterred and given to the purifying flame. Rather too than lose the benefits of cremation, when wood was scarce and when it was forbidden to cast the partly consumed bodies in the river, the poor people of Bengal, with, for that race, even avidity, are closing with the proposal of Sir Cecil Beadon to erect a Cinerator, and thus departing from their ancient traditional routine.[88] Not even the recurring cases of premature burning, such as that not long ago at Ramkistopore, can wean the Hindoos from the burning _ghat_. They will risk their lives in war time in order to collect fuel to bury a dead comrade.[89] In any country where cremation is practised, it is only when there is absolutely no property whatsoever that burning is omitted. For instance, a Zaisaugh amongst the Kalmucks, whose property will pay for a proper offering, can have his dead body burnt, and only the utterly poor are buried or abandoned.[90] More than this, in order to establish apparently a proper regard for the practice, and preclude any laxity in its observance, a sham burning is carried out by some peoples. Should, for example, a Khāsi Hill tribe man die whilst on a distant expedition, and his body not be recoverable, some cowries or shell money are burnt with the deceased man's clothes, and the ashes placed in the family repository.[91] [88] The first devised cinerator was that of Col. Thos. Martin, and in it any number of bodies could be calcined at a time, and still allow of a separate collection of the ashes. This cinerator was in the shape of a pentagon, to accommodate the various castes, and had a separate place allotted to the Brahmins. [89] 'Iron.' [90] Liadov. [91] Godwin-Austen. There are several spurious kinds, or half-and-half schemes, of cremation. For instance, the Fresendajians place their dead in vases of aquafortis.[92] Caustic potash and other chemical substances have also been proposed for placing in the coffin.[93] A quasi-burning--the burial of the bodies in quicklime--is also practised by the Sephardic Jews of Gibraltar and North Africa. Even recently, the Spanish and Portuguese Jews have made use of this system at the Mile End cemetery, London.[94] During the Prussian occupation of Chalons, numbers of typhus-stricken dead were interred in this material, but the result was unsatisfactory.[95] At York can be seen a casting inside which a Roman lady was so burned, but whether intentionally or not, it is impossible to say. [92] Frazer.