On Sunday, March 15, 1896, my daughter and I were accompanied to the Towers of Silence, situated on the highest part of Malabar Hill, Bombay, by Mr. Phiroze C. Sethna, a highly accomplished Parsee merchant, to whom we were indebted for many acts of kindness during our sojourn in the city. The position is one of rare beauty, commanding as it does charming panoramic views of Bombay and the surrounding neighbourhood, while immediately below are extensive cocoa and other tropical plantations. At the entrance to the towers is a notice-board in English, stating that none but Parsees are admitted. We passed under the porch into the sacred enclosure, and found ourselves in the midst of a lovely garden planted with choice shrubs and trees, and were each presented by the gardener with bouquets of freshly-cut flowers. [THE TOWERS OF SILENCE.] The towers are five in number, the smallest having been erected in 1669, all modelled after the same pattern, and are about twenty-five feet high. Inside is a circular platform about three hundred feet in circumference paved with large slabs, and divided into rows of shallow open receptacles in which the bodies are placed. There are three sections--for males, females, and children. We noticed a number of vultures sitting on the adjacent trees, and were informed that, when a funeral is on its way, large numbers congregate upon the coping of the tower, ready to seize the body and devour it the moment it is deposited by the corpse-bearers on the slabs, after the conclusion of the funeral ceremonies. In an hour or less the corpse is completely stripped of its flesh, when the bones are thrown into a well. From a sanitary point of view, the plan is preferable to burying or to cremation, which last, as it is carried out in India, is a slow and tedious process. Vultures have never been known to attack children, or even babies left by their mothers tied for safety to a branch of a tree, and will not, it is said, attack a person only apparently dead, as in a trance or coma. Another custom amongst the Parsees in the treatment of their dead is to bring a dog to the corpse before it is removed from the house, and another dog on its arrival at the Tower of Silence. This ceremony is known as the Sagdeed. In a pamphlet on the “Funeral Ceremonies of the Parsees,” by Ervad Jivanji Jamshedje Mody, B.A., a learned priest of the Parsee cult, with whom the author had the pleasure of an interview, the explanation is that, according to the ancient belief, the spotted dog can discriminate between the really and the apparently dead. Dr. Franz Hartmann and other writers appear also to be of the opinion, which the author considers highly probable, that a dog knows whether his master is really dead or only in a trance; but that a strange dog would be able to discriminate and act as a sentinel to prevent a living person being mistaken for a dead one, is highly improbable.