can be no property in a corpse, that sepul ture is so universal that in all civilized coun tries it is required that dead human bodies be decently interred, and that it will be only under unusual circumstances courts will dis turb the repose of the dead by permitting a removal of their bones. Though courts have used this very language, they have never deigned to explain how such removal would disturb a repose that has become an absolute rigidity of a fixidity. Notwithstanding all this dictum, courts have been compelled to go further and declare that cemeteries perse are not nuisances. It sounds like a saw to have a . Court re mark, "burial-places for the dead are indis pensable." Well, rather, when corpses will not patronize pyres and crematories. It is just as much a saw for us to say that until timejunneth not we are likely to have this indispensable with us. We must confess it would be extremely difficult to get along without having what we cannot do without. What would we do with the stiffs? The medical schools would have reached a millen nium of a supply which they could never exhaust. This same Alabama Court further asserts that burial-places may be the property of the public, devoted to the uses of the public, or the owner of a freehold may devote a part of his premises to the burial of his own fam ily or friends. It is but a just exercise of his dominion over his own property. Neither adjoining proprietors nor the public can complain, unless it is shown that from the manner of burial or some other cause, irre parable injury will result to them. It is quite an error to suppose that of itself a burying-ground is a nuisance to those living in its immediate vicinity. Much depends upon the mode of interment whether it can be justly asserted that in any event injury will result from it. The particular locality
and its surroundings must also be considered. Low, damp ground percolated by water will hasten decomposition and the soil will be saturated with its products. Dry, high, wellventilated localities retard rather than hasten decomposition. If in a brief space of time there were numerous burials there might be great peril of the products of decomposition escaping into and polluting the atmosphere. So on and so forth. In a very recent case an alleged expert was aslied for his opinion upon the question of pollution by the products of decomposition, and he testified that an interred body will begin to cast off germs in a few hours after burial, that the germs will be highly poison ous, that later they are not quite so poisonous, but take on a permanent form and pass as albuminoids, and can be carried along by water supplies. His conclusion was that germs might be carried into the soil for a space of time running from five to ten years after the interment. So take a front seat and watch these albuminoids with slow and measured tread pass by. They must be some new species heretofore extinct because undiscovered. They will undoubtedly look like elephants, for given an existence and a name, such things often become as big as mammoths and frighten us just as much. A Maine case presented many curious sit uations. In a sparsely settled region, a family burial-ground had been in the course of planting for forty years and contained about ten bodies, the last being interred about fifteen years before the litigation in question began. The owner then decided to move the graveyard to a spot which he taste fully graded and adorned. This place hap pened to be at a point about forty feet from the windows of a neighbor's sitting-room and also in plain view from his front windows and door. As first located the graves were only visible from the back rooms of the
