The crematory at Washington, Pa., is a small, plain, brick building, containing but two rooms,—furnace and reception room. The retort is exactly similar to the ones used in making gas, and, indeed, the whole process is the same. The Washington crematory is one story high, 30 feet long, 20 feet wide. The reception room is 20 feet square, including walls, and the furnace room 20 feet by 10 feet, including walls. Cremation is performed in a fire-clay cylinder or retort, called the incinerator, which is three feet in diameter by seven feet long, and the walls of which are from one to two inches thick. The retort is like those used in the manufacture of illuminating gas, but somewhat of a different shape. It is heated to a red heat by a furnace fire which is built underneath and kept burning for 20 or 30 hours before the cremation is to take place. The body is placed in an iron crib made in the shape of a coffin, with small, round rods, with feet three or four inches long to keep it up off the bottom of the retort. These feet are inserted into a flat strip of iron two inches wide and a quarter inch thick, turned up at the ends so that the crib with the body will slide into the retort easily. In addition to the ordinary burial garments, the body is covered with a cloth wet with a saturated solution of sulphate of alum (common alum), which even when burned, retains its form and prevents any part of the corpse from being seen until the bony skeleton begins to crumble down. The incinerator receives to itself the intense heat of the fire below, but does not admit the flames. The consequence is that the corpse, when introduced into the retort, is not, in a proper sense of the word, burned. It is reduced to ashes by the chemical application of intense heat. Gases are driven off or absorbed, and, being carried down into the fire from the incinerator and led back and forth 25 feet through its flames, are utterly consumed. Even the smoke of the fire is consumed, and nothing can be seen issuing from the chimney but the quiver of the heat. The process might be called, says an eye-witness of a cremation in this furnace, the spiritualization of the body, the etherealization or sublimation of its material parts. The time required to complete the operation is about two hours. A very small portion of the remains is ashes, but the mass is in the form of calcined bones in small fragments, very white, odorless, entirely deprived of all animal matter, and may be preserved any length of time without change. There are four to seven pounds of these remains from various sized adult bodies, and can be placed for preservation in a marble or terra-cotta urn, into which a photograph of the deceased, with appropriate record, can be placed before introducing the remains. This urn can be placed in the columbarium of the crematory, kept among the cherished memorials of the family of the departed, or placed beside other remains previously buried in cemeteries or graveyards.