As the beginning has been made, we can
afford to wait for the rest, which will come in good time. The lesson to
be learned from it now is, that such collections are needed, that they
are appreciated not by a few but by many, and that, so far as the cost
is concerned, they are within the reach of every well-settled
community.--_New York Evening Post._
* * * * *
SANITARY ENTOMBMENT: THE IDEAL DISPOSITION OF THE DEAD.[4]
[Illustration]
In this country, partly because there were few places of large
population, and partly because it was an early and general tendency to
use cemeteries rather than churches, and the grounds adjacent to them,
the evils of earth-burial did not manifest themselves so soon or in so
marked a manner as in the Old World. But there were instances enough to
convince the most incredulous that a radical change must be made. Dr.
Ackerly, writing in 1822, thus describes the condition of the
burial-ground connected with Trinity Church, New York, forty years
before: "During the Revolutionary War this ground emitted pestilential
vapors, the recollection of which is not obliterated from the memory of
a number of living witnesses." In the same year, the _Commercial
Advertiser_ published an article in reference to the present evils of
earth-burial at the same place, in which it was said: "It will be
remembered that the graveyard, being above the streets on the west, and
encompassed by a massive stone wall, and the east side being on a level
with Broadway, it results that this body of earth, the surface of which
has no declivity to carry off the rain, thus becomes a great reservoir
of contaminating fluids suspended above the adjacent streets.
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