“The gases into which the animal body is resolved by putrefaction are ammonia, carbonic acid, carbonic oxide, cyanogen, and sulphureted, phosphureted, and carbureted hydrogen. The first, and the two last-named gases, are most abundant.” We omit here some details as to the time a body takes in rotting. “From which it appears, that these noble elements and rich essences of humanity are too subtle and volatile to continue long with the corpse; but soon disengage themselves, and escape from it. After which nothing remains but the foul refuse in the vat; the mere _caput mortuum_ in the crucible; the vile dust and ashes of the tomb. Nor does inhumation, however deep in the ground, nor drowning in the lowest depths and darkest caverns of the fathomless abyss, prevent those subtle essences, rare attenuate spirits, or gases, from escaping; or chain down to dust those better, nobler elements of the human body. No bars can imprison them; no vessels detain them from their kindred element, confine them from their native home.” We are all of us familiar with the more noticeable of these “essences,” by smell, if not by name. Metaphysicians tell us that perceptions and ideas _will_ follow in a train: perhaps that may account for the sudden recollection of an old-fashioned story—may the moderns pardon it. A young Cambridge student, airing his wisdom at a dinner-party, was ingenious upon the Theory of Winds. He was most eloquent concerning heat and cold; radiation, rarefaction; polar and equatorial currents; he had brought his peroration to a close, when he turned round upon a grave Professor of his College, saying, “And what, sir, do you believe to be the cause of wind?” The learned man replied, “Pea-soup—pea-soup!” In the group of friends around a social soup-tureen, must we in future recognize “The feast of reason, and—the flow of soul!” How gladly shall we fight the fight of life, hoping that, after death, we shall meet in a world of sulphureted hydrogen and other gases! And where do the Sanitary Reformers suppose that, after death, _their_ gases will go—they who, in life, with asphalte and paving-stones, would have restrained the souls of their own fathers from ascending into upper air?