It is evident that a porous soil facilitates decomposition, the products of which it absorbs and retains till they have entered into some harmless combination. There is, however, a limit to its efficiency. When it becomes overcharged with the products of decomposition, it can only hold a small quantity of them; the rest are delivered to the water, which permeates it and the air which passes over it. On the other hand, it is clear that a very damp, non-porous soil into which the air cannot enter favors putrefaction. A state of saturation is produced in the course of time in the best of cemeteries by a continued system of overcrowding. Although overcrowding of cemeteries is confined almost entirely to the countries of Europe, yet there are many American burial-grounds in which this condition exists; and, what is worse, they are annually multiplying. Some of these overcrowded graveyards are situated in large cities, in the centre of a dense population. In these churchyards it is impossible to dig a single grave without the disinterring of the bones of one previously buried there. Imagine the consequences of such a state! Isn’t it far better to remove the possibility of future disease and danger at once than to allow it to grow by degrees, till it assumes a terrible and fatal dimension? Isn’t it better to refrain from the use of cemeteries entirely, and resort instead to the clean, pure, and undangerous system of incineration? Consider! Does it agree with our ideas of right and wrong to endanger the lives of our great-grandchildren or their offspring by our methods of disposing of the dead? For, by the time they appear on the stage of this world, the burial-ground now sanitary will have become a breeding-place of disease from overuse. When we remove burial-grounds to a distance, we only postpone the evil. We insure our own safety, it is true, by so doing; but we encumber the ground with most virulent seeds, and leave to future generations—to those who come after us—a terrible crop of pollution, disease germs, and death. Our own security from harm should not actuate us in this matter. We should be wise enough to prevent the evil while we have the power, so that our offspring will not justly reproach us for entailing upon them such a terrible legacy. Among American cities there is none that needs a change of method in the disposal of its dead as greatly as New Orleans, in Louisiana.