From what I have said on the influence of soil, in determining the period after which burying-grounds may be resumed for a second series of interments, it will be obvious to you that this condition is an important element in deciding the sufficiency of any area for given burial purposes. And the site of your Cemetery might be such as somewhat to lessen, or greatly to increase, the suggested extent of your estimate. It would be fruitless, however, now to detain you with any endeavour to trace the several influences which different soils exert over animal decay. Such remarks, at the present time, could only be addressed to hypothetical cases, or stated in the most general form. Therefore, instead of attempting this anticipative argument on the subject, I hold myself ready to report to you, specifically, on the suitableness of whatever soil may be proposed to you for the purposes of your Cemetery.[96] [96] For similar reasons, I defer any discussion of the depth at which bodies may most properly be deposited in the ground. The thickness of superjacent soil, which will deodorise, before their escape, the gaseous products of any given decomposing mass, or which will retain these gases more or less permanently in combination, varies most importantly with certain chemical and mechanical qualities of the soil: and on these it would be useless to dwell by anticipation. For accurate results, it may be necessary, after the selection of a site and during its preparation, to institute experiments on the subject. There is yet one other consideration which may affect the extent of your purchase. The law restricts you from approaching within 200 yards of any dwelling-house, without the previous written consent of its owner, lessee, and occupier. But there is no law restricting the nearness within which any builder may approach your wall with his design for new habitations; and it might easily occur to you, within a short time of establishing your Cemetery, to find a new town growing in close proximity around it. If there be any meaning and value in the clause, which forbids your undue approach to inhabited houses--if it truly represent that this approach would be a sanitary evil, then obviously the law is deficient in the respect adverted to. It would be in your power to guarantee the continuance of a belt of unoccupied ground, as an immediate circuit to your Cemetery, in either of two ways:--either, namely, you might purchase a considerable extent of ground beyond the actual requirements of your Cemetery, might devote its central hundred acres to interment, and might let its remaining circumference for agricultural purposes; or, if you were fortunate enough to be treating for the central portion of some considerable estate, you might stipulate, as a condition of purchase, that no building should be reared within such distance of the wall of your Cemetery, as you, on due consideration, may deem fit.