True! The tale that hangs thereby is illustrative of the carelessness and ignorance of man alike. The grave has been at all times a kind of box of Pandora, with this difference,—it did not require unclosing: unopened, the grave sent forth its children—pestilence and death—to decimate the ranks of the population of the globe. But all calamities caused by burial have been endured by people with perfect indifference, and it was not until modern times that any reforms were attempted at all. But in spite of these so-called reforms, the murder of the living by the dead has continued. The reforms I mentioned generally resulted in the removal of cemeteries to the suburbs of cities. In this way the evil effects of interment were deferred for some time, till the city enlarged, and the population closed in around the burial-grounds. What is burial? For what purpose do we place the bodies of our dead in the earth? It is the beginning of a chemical process—a process which ends finally in the total dissolution of the corpse. The chemical constituents of our body are returned to nature. Burial and cremation are in a sense the same; in either case the body oxydates. The great distinction between the two lies in the fact, that the burning in the grave requires years for its completion, and is fraught with danger to the living, whilst in case of incineration the body is reduced to its primitive elements in the brief space of a few hours, and is unaccompanied by anything that may do harm. Dr. A. B. Prescott, Professor of Chemistry in the University of Michigan, has determined what elements of the human body are destroyed or dissipated by cremation, and what remain in the ashes. In a letter to the _Detroit Post_ he states:—