two last examples will show how nearly omission may be made a non-transgression of a law. Our burial laws specify that each dead adult shall be entitled to four superficial yards of earth. Allowing for the predominant deaths amongst children, this would be an average of three yards. This thirty-six superficial feet is about the space allowed to each body by the authorities of Stuttgart and Munich; but in Würtemberg fifty-four feet are accorded, and in some parts of Austria as much as ninety feet is awarded to each adult. The common practice with us is to allow about a quarter of an acre of burial-ground to each 1,000 head of population, where the soil is favourable; but some authorities double this allowance, and leave room for embellishing the ground. Wise cemetery companies also allow a space between each alternate row of grave-spaces, in order to prevent trampling. They, moreover, encourage the purchase of family freehold grave-plots containing three or six grave-spaces. It is true that the proprietors of the burial-ground profit by this payment in anticipation; but the benefit accrues largely to the public as well, for it does not become necessary to open the same grave should two members of a family die with but a short interval of time between. For the rest, a commodious grave-space presupposes a sufficiency of soil to absorb the gases, allows the grave to be opened without the earth of the adjoining one falling into it, dispenses with the shoring up of the sides with planks, and provides sufficient space for suitable monuments. As a general rule, one-sixth of the entire acreage of a cemetery will also of a necessity be appropriated for roads and paths, for sites of lodges and chapels, and botanical groves. The depth at which burial is practised varies much, but it is usually from eight to ten feet in soil propitious to decay. Six feet would suffice, it might be; but, as the intention is to be able to reopen the graves fourteen years after the burial of an adult, and eight years after the burial of a child, a fair maximum depth is resorted to. When a burial has taken place in an allotment, the above period of lying fallow can only be shortened should it be necessary to open the grave to inter another member of the family. In such a case, a foot of earth must be interposed.[99] The law is also distinct on the point that no one shall be buried in any unwalled grave within four feet of the ordinary level of the ground, unless it be a child, and then not less than three feet of soil shall lie above it. [99] During an official enquiry held by Mr. Holland, in November 1874, into the management of the Tooting cemetery, it transpired that four or five inches of intervening earth had been deemed necessary by the inspector of the cemetery, instead of the twelve inches stipulated by law. In the case of private graves the coffins had been laid without any intervening earth at all.