All persons are formally invited to furnish any indications they possess that may lead to the recognition of the bodies, and are informed that they will be put to no expense. A photographic plant was installed here in 1877, and all bodies are photographed,--those which are not recognized before burial have these, their last portraits, affixed at the entrance. The number of corpses received annually is about nine hundred, including new-born babies, fœtuses, and the remnants from the dissecting-tables, and this number increases year by year. In it are included also those bodies which it is desired to submit to a medico-legal examination. About six-sevenths of the total number exposed are those of men, and about one-seventh are never recognized. The sanitary surveillance is under the charge of three medical inspectors; not only are the autopsies here frequent, but there are also held many conferences in legal medicine, and there is a laboratory of toxicology. All departments of the establishment are cramped for want of space, and it is proposed to establish a distinct medico-legal institution on a new site, at the angle of the Quai aux Fleurs and the Rue du Cloître-Notre-Dame. On the crest of the hill in Père-Lachaise, in a fine open space from which the tombs recede on all sides,--as if appalled at the presence of this horrible new-comer,--rises the tall Crematory furnace, with its quasi-classic columbarium behind it. Great improvements have been made in the material details of this method of disposing of the dead since its first revival in modern times, and even since the erection of this edifice,--but the overturning of immemorial prejudices proceeds but slowly. France claims the credit of introducing this excellent sanitary measure, and as far back as the end of the last century, in the year V of the Republic, a law was proposed by a commission of the Cinq-Cents granting to each family the privilege of choosing between inhumation and cremation for their dead. Later, "the administration centrale of the department of the Seine adopted a regulation prescribing the cremation of all those bodies destined for the fosse commune whose owners had not expressed, during their lifetime, a contrary desire. Under the Consulate, Madame Geneste, wife of the citizen Pierre-Francois Lachèze, chargé d'affaires of the French Republic at Venice, obtained from the préfet Frochot an authorization to cause the body of her deceased son to be burned. The préfet invoked, in support of his decision, this consideration, 'that the last cares to be rendered to mortal remains constitute a religious act of which public authority cannot prescribe the methods without violating the principle of liberty of opinions.' Madame Dupuis-Geneste, however, did not make use of this authorization."