The first question that comes before us for consideration is, Would not cremation destroy the evidence of crime? This refers not only to cases of poisoning, but also to those instances where persons meet with a violent death by being shot, stabbed, or otherwise severely injured. This is the only tangible objection that has ever been made by the anti-cremationists. It is of great importance, and unless we are able to show that it can be obviated, we must admit that it constitutes a serious drawback to cremation. This, as Dr. J. O. Marble appropriately remarks, is, in fact, the one and only real lion in the way of the progress of incineration as a substitute for inhumation, and unless we can muzzle this lion, he may frighten away the pilgrims. If the charges made by the anti-cremation party were true, incineration, if established, would offer facilities for the commission and concealment of hideous crimes. A victim could be destroyed by poison, the dead body carried to a furnace and reduced to a small heap of ashes in a short space of time, and the crime thus forever placed beyond the reach of detection. The cremator, then, would become the instrument and accomplice of the murderer. It is urged that the agents employed in the commonest form of secret murder—poisoning—are often of a novel, subtle, and various character. We are apprised that it is extremely improbable that the physician called in, if he be called in, has ever seen their effects, either on man or animals; that care will be taken that he shall not see them; that the poisoner has the advantage of preparation on his side; and finally, that discovery, when made, is generally made at some variable period after death, and then rather in consequence of an aggregation of suspicious collateral circumstances pointing to the commission of other crimes of a like nature than of any possible observations at the bedside of the murdered person. Indeed, a formidable array of arguments, which can be, nevertheless, overcome in several ways. The question now before us for solution is not of recent date, but has already agitated the minds of the ancients, who, most probably, investigated the cause of death before they consigned their dead to the funeral pyre. Tacitus, the Roman historian, relates that the corpse of Germanicus lay in state in the forum of Antioch, a place fixed for sepulchral rites, but that “whether it bore the marks of poisoning yet remains undecided,” for the people were divided in their opinions, some pitying Germanicus and suspecting Piso’s guilt, others prejudiced in favor of the latter.