This, one of the most discreetly urged weapons against cremation, was that promulgated by Professor Mohr, who asserted that if incineration were practiced to its full extent, an interruption to the order of nature would ensue, since the supply of ammonia would be arrested or greatly curtailed. Dr. Mohr’s objections to the cremation of the dead principally rest upon the following bases:— 1. That ammonia is the most important form in which nitrogen is taken up by the plants. 2. That free nitrogen does not, or at any rate in sufficient abundance, return to the organized world. 3. That in cremation the ammonia is entirely destroyed, and the nitrogen entirely liberated. 4. That the nitrogen of buried corpses is entirely converted into ammonia. Mohr soon had many followers who imagined that if the bulk of all animal remains should be burnt to ashes, the mischief produced by the loss of ammonia would be incalculable. They claimed that it is as necessary to vegetable life as is the air we breathe to us; that there is no counterbalance in nature whereby this ingredient can be supplied from other sources; and that by cutting off a large proportion of the supply of ammonia the loss would be quickly felt throughout all the animal kingdom, and would soon be followed by an appreciable diminution of animal life on the globe. Dr. Mohr’s objections were met by the eminent Professor Franchimont, of the University of Leyden, Holland, who proved that the views held by his _confrère_ were both erroneous and absurd, and concluded his _exposé_ as follows:— 1. That it is not proved that ammonia is the chief nitrogenous constituent of plants. 2. That it is proved that free nitrogen returns by many and various routes to the organic world. 3. That it is not certain that by interment all the nitrogen becomes ammonia, and that probably a portion of this ammonia is temporarily taken out of circulation; and, finally, 4. That it is not proved that the nitrogen is completely set free during cremation. And even if this were so, its quantity, in comparison with that of the ammonia now yearly produced by the dry distillation and combustion of coal, is so small that the loss of it cannot be advanced as any really serious objection to the practice of cremation. I must here add that the explanations given by Professor Franchimont are held to be perfectly satisfactory by seventeen professors and teachers of botany and chemistry in the Dutch universities, whose names are well known in the scientific world. Students of agricultural chemistry, and others interested in the subject, should not fail to read Mr. Eassie’s excellent article on the asserted loss of ammonia caused by the cremation of bodies, in the _London Sanitary Record_ of Jan. 18, 1878. It must be remembered that all animals—from the smallest insect to the largest beast—excrete a great amount of ammonia during their lifetime, which passes off with the fecal matter, urine, and transpiration.