A New Scheme.

Evening Star, Issue 6726, 7 October 1885, Page 4

A New Scheme.

A scientific Frenchman residing near Brest has had a happy thought, which he communicates to the Paris ' Figaro ' whilst waiting till ho can embody it in a document to be submitted to the municipal authorities. It concerns the dead, and what the living are to do with them. Cemeteries, observes the man of science, are overcrowded; in the vicinity of large towns they are moreover, very unhealthy. Cremation is contrary to French notions, and yet the dead must be disposed of in some manner. Then he goes on to say that eighteen years ago lie made the suggestion he now again brings to public

notice, fearing it has been forgotten. It is neither to bury nor burn the departed ; but, so to say, to turn them into statues by a system he has tried on human bodies—and to a still larger extent on animals—with the utmost success. He is the inventor of a peculiar compound for the preservation of corpses, which, after they have been duly rubbed with it, are to be steeped in a bath, whence they are turned out " copper, zinc, silver, or gold statues," according to the social position and means of relatives. He is willing to explain fully his system to inquiring minds. In the meantime he draws attention to its manifold advantages, such, for instance, as the indefinite preservation of the dear departed, the suppression of unwholesome cemeteries, and the facilities of erecting statues. On the decease, he points out, of a great man whom the country wished to honor, there would be none of the expense incurred for marble or bronze. The body would itself become the statue, in silver, gold, or bronze ; and thus, not the effigy, but the illustrious man himself, would be handed down to posterity.