The twenty-fifth annual meeting of the English Cremation Society has just been held, and its distinguished president, Sir Henry Thompson, gave an interesting sketch of its history, which is that of the cremation movement in England. Whether we entirely sympathize with the crusade against that "relic of barbarism, earth burial," or not, our uppermost feeling in reading this record can only be one of astonishment. One would certainly have thought that cremation, whether esthetically or economically desirable or not, was certainly rational and unobjectionable enough to be well within the private liberty of individual choice, but bumbledom thinks far otherwise. And, unfortunately, what bumbledom says on this subject, "goes" without appeal. The society spent two years in finding a cemetery which was willing to permit bodies to be cremated upon its premises at the society's expense. A furnace was built and all arrangements completed, when the bishop of the diocese