Between the church where the hearts of royal princes were once deposited, and the catacombs where nameless human remains are still preserved, there is but little connection. It has already, however, been mentioned that a portion of the catacombs separates the Val de Grâce from its foundations; and a word may here not inappropriately be said of underground Paris. The catacombs are certainly miscalled. The name carries us back to antiquity; and those who have no positive information on the subject may be excused for thinking that here were buried the inhabitants of Lutetia in the time of Cæsar and of Julian the Apostate. As a matter of fact, however, the so-called catacombs are simply quarries to which have been removed from time to time since the closing years of the last century the skeletons and bones of those interred in the Paris cemeteries and graveyards, which, as they became too full, had to be relieved of their mouldering contents. In 1780 the inhabitants of some houses in the Rue de la Lingerie, alarmed by certain deplorable accidents which happened through the propinquity of their cellars to a large common graveyard formed to hold 2,000 bodies, addressed a petition to the lieutenant-general of police, pointing out the dangers by which the health of Paris was threatened. The lieutenant recommended the suppression of the Church of the Innocents, and the exhumation of the bodies deposited in the ancient cemetery attached to it, which it was proposed should be turned into a public thoroughfare. The suggestions of the lieutenant, M. Lenoir, having been accepted, his successor, M. Crosne, appointed a commission through the members of the Royal Society of Medicine, which was entrusted with the duty of emptying the cemetery of the Innocents of its dangerous contents. The decision arrived at was that the human remains should be removed from the cemetery and placed in the quarries of Mont-Souris. During the year 1786 the quarries were prepared for receiving the bones of whole generations of the Paris population. In some places pillars were built up in order to support the quarries where there seemed to be a probability of their giving way from above; in others, where the quarries were open, they were covered over, so that the new catacombs might be everywhere underground. Excavations, too, had to be made; and, finally, an upper storey was constructed, so that the bones now repose in two different layers, one above the other. On the 7th of April, 1787, the catacombs intended to serve as general ossuary to all the cemeteries of Paris were solemnly blessed and consecrated; and the same day began the translation of the contents of the cemetery of the Innocents to the catacombs. Dr. Theuriet, who superintended the removal, came to the conclusion, together with other medical men, his assistants, that, from the position of the limbs, a number of persons must have been buried in a state of lethargy, so