From the Health Officer's Report to the Bombay Municipality we find that the cost of fuel for cremation is exceedingly heavy; and that a body cannot be consumed under four hours. 'On more than one occasion bodies have not been totally consumed, the relations having brought too scanty a supply of firewood.' In this document we also find a recommendation 'that a cinerator be erected at the burning-ghât, which would be at the disposal of the poor on the payment of a small fee. By this means the Hindoo community would get accustomed to it, and would see its advantage. A body would be put in at one end of a closed vessel, which in its transit through the cinerator would be exposed to intense heat, and after a certain time drawn out and opened. The ashes of the deceased would alone remain, which could be carried away and kept.' As it may prove interesting to some reader, I will now give a description of a cremation ceremony of the very highest class, as performed in Siam, in which country, as has been stated elsewhere, only those dead are buried whose survivors cannot pay the fees of the priests. It is said to be from the pen of a lady[184] who was a resident for several years in that country, and is an extract from a paper of hers which appeared in a late number of 'Lippincott's Magazine.' [184] F. A. Feudge. Burning is now, and has been for centuries, the universal custom in Siam--preferred, it is supposed, because of the facility it affords for removing the precious dust of the loved and lost. In old, aristocratic houses I have seen arranged in the family receptacle massive golden urns, containing the ashes of eight, ten, or twelve generations of ancestors; and these are cherished as precious heirlooms, to descend through the eldest male branch.