Rev. John D. Beugless, D.D., thus describes the burial-grounds of New York City: “Of the great cemeteries about New York, there is not one, not even Woodland or Greenwood, in the public lots of which three or more bodies are not put in one grave,—that of John Doe, who died from ‘a bare bodkin,’ being sandwiched between those of Richard Roe and James Low, who were victims respectively of small-pox and yellow-fever. In the public or poor quarter of Calvary Cemetery a far worse state of things obtains—more appalling than even the _fosse commune_ of Paris, for it is the _fosse commune sans chaux_. A trench is dug, seven feet wide, ten to twelve feet deep, and of indefinite length, in which the coffins are stowed, tier upon tier, making a flight of steps, five or more deep, and with not enough earth to hide one from the next. And this is our vaunted ‘Christian burial’ in this new country, with its myriads of broad acres! What shall our children say of us, when they come, perforce, from stress of space, to build their dwellings upon these beds of pestilence?” [Illustration: THE CREMATORIUM AT BRESCIA. (From Dr. Pini’s work.) ] That is the way we, “the Christian nation par excellence,” treat friendless paupers and criminals. Shame! shame! A dog is more decently interred. The cemeteries of the city of Brooklyn occupy nearly 2000 acres of land. A thoughtful eminent physician gives it as his opinion that the prevailing southwest wind, blowing over these corruption festering plague spots, carries to Flatbush the germs of typhoid fever and diphtheria, and swells the death-rate of that city to its present alarming magnitude. The more one considers cremation, the more one finds himself wondering how it has come to pass that we practice interment, with its many faults and dangers, and do not burn our dead. It is clear that overcrowding of burial-grounds must lead to evil consequences. A ground that is saturated with putrefying material can emit naught but poisonous odors, cannot fail to contaminate the purest and clearest water, must vitiate any atmosphere. Incineration deserves the respect to-day which the ancients paid to it, and is the only way of disposing of the dead so as to avoid the terrible consequences of the mephitic graveyard gases, of the dangers with which the ordinary mode of burial threatens us. The truth was taught us by the Tuscans some three hundred years ago. At that time a whale was cast upon the shore of Tuscany. The inhabitants of the surrounding country hastened to the spot, and removed the ribs of the large fish, to hang them in the churches as a memento of the rare occurrence. The flesh was left to rot in the scorching southern sun. An epidemic of typhoid fever was the result; and when, ten years later, another whale happened to strand in the same locality, the people, having become wise by its previous experience, destroyed the monster by chopping it to pieces, and burning these, one after another.