The Parsees or Gabres—the race of fire-worshippers who still exist in India,—abhor the burning of the dead as a pollution of the Deity whom they adore. This feeling they appear to have inherited from the ancient worshippers of fire, the Chaldeans, and the Magi of Persia; from whom, also, they seem to have derived the custom of exposing the bodies of the dead to be devoured by dogs, and beasts and birds of prey. A similar usage exists at this day in the kingdom of Tibet. ‘According to the custom of Tibet,’ says Mr. Turner (Narrative of an Embassy to Tibet), ‘instead of that pious attention which is paid to the remains of the dead, in the preservation of their bodies from pollution, by depositing them in the ground, they are here exposed after their decease, like the Parsees of India, in the open air, and left to be devoured by ravens, kites, and other carnivorous birds. In the more populous parts, dogs also come in for their share of the prey, and regularly attend the consummation of the last obsequies.’ The same practice anciently existed among the Colchians, and has been remarked by modern travellers among the Illinois of North America, and the savage inhabitants of the Aleutian islands. Even in this revolting custom we trace a desire—savagely indulged, it is true—to ward off the bad effects of putrefaction by a speedy disposal of the air-polluting remains of the dead. Among the Caffres, Hottentots, and other savage tribes of Southern Africa, adjoining the European settlements, it seems to have been customary to expose aged and helpless people in desert places, and leave them to die, because of a superstition against any one expiring in a hut. Intercourse with civilisation is mitigating this and other barbarities. Of the means used to avert the evils of decay by preservation, none are more singular than those mentioned by Captain Tuckey, as in force upon the river Congo. The people envelope their corpses in cloth; the smell of putrefaction being only kept in by the quantity of wrappers. These are successively multiplied as they can be procured, or according to the rank of the deceased. The bulk thus attained is only limited by the power of conveyance to the grave; so that the first hut in which the body is deposited becoming too small, a second, a third—even to a sixth—each larger than the former, is placed over it.