While speaking on the subject of premature burials, in a lecture delivered at Everett Hall, Brooklyn, New York, June, 1883, Mr. J. D. Beugless, the then President of the New York Cremation Society, said that an undertaker in that city (Brooklyn) recently made provision in his will, and exacted a promise from his wife of great caution, that his body should be cremated, being induced thereto by the fear of being buried alive. “Live burials,” he says, “are far more frequent than most people think.” It is reported that another undertaker of Brooklyn some time since deposited a body in a receiving vault temporarily: when he went some days later to remove it for burial, what was his horror, upon opening the niche in which the coffin had been placed, to find the body crouching at the door, stark in death, the hair dishevelled, the flesh of the arms lacerated and torn, and the face having the most appalling expression of horror and despair ever witnessed by mortal eyes! An undertaker, writing to the _Plymouth Morning News_, October 2, 1895, mentions that he reluctantly buried a young person, who lay in the coffin for seven clear days without sign of decomposition, and only consented to close the coffin then, on the assurance that the same conditions attended all the deaths which had previously occurred in the family. Dr. Hartmann and other authorities have found that such cases are probably the subjects of catalepsy, a malady which sometimes runs in families and affects every member. The undertaker adds that, in future, he should decline to close the coffin of the apparently dead until signs of decomposition set in, “thus preventing the possibility of our worst fears being realised.” If undertakers generally would adopt these wise and necessary precautions, living sepulture would come to an end. Under the existing imperfect system of medical examination--and, as we have shown, both in England and in the United States, where there is usually no examination at all--there is often a reckless haste in interments. No thoughtful persons can contemplate the burial of a million and a half human beings annually in these two countries without mistrust and misgivings.