Griggs courier., 1893-10-13

THE FATE OF MANS BONES.
Not Even . Bone Left Of Forty thousand
Millions Of the Race.
The bones are composition of lime
and phosphorus. and are the most dur.
able part of the human system. Leave
the body OF a man or animal exposed
to the air. in few weeks it passes into
the earth and atmosphere, leaving only
the skeleton, which after a consider
able lapse of time, disappears also.
This reabsorption of the body by the
elements is comparatively rapid in the
towers of the Parsees and in the case
of those who perish in traversing the
desert. The body of man can not
properly be- said to return to dust.
That is an ancient prejudice. Even in
the case of the bones the phosphate
passes partly into the earth or air in
the form of oxygen or phosphorus. and
the lime is mixed with the soil, en-
bodied in rocks, or dissolved in water.
In the process of cremation the tissues
disappear in the form of vapor, and
there remains residue composed of
pieces of bone of various sizes, which,
it water is added and they are dried,
become ca coarse dust that can be
Theoretically concealed in an urn and
preserved for an in definite period.
In these days human bones found by
chance are decently buried, or if it is
necessary to condemn an old cemetery
the remains found in it are inferred
elsewhere. I'm Paris this process has
been going on for hundred years,
that is, since the epoch of the French
revolution. The bones of those buried
hastily after street riots, and those of
the dead of the disused cemeteries,
have been removed from time to time
to the catacombs, until the number of
skeletons more or less complete here
assembled amounts at present to six
millions. In the cemetery of the Capu-
cines, at Rome, human bones are ar
ranged in fanciful designs whose ar
tistic ingenuity relieves considerably
the painful suggestions of mortality.
1t is a theory of certain religious or.
ders that death should continually be
kept in mind by actions or objects of a
sepulchral nature.
The comparative durability of the
bones has caused their extensive pre-
servation as sacred relics. The list of
these is too long to be given with any
sort of completeness, but some of them
may be mentioned as specimens OF the
rest. OF bones of the arm there exist
eight of st. Blaise, nine of st. Vincent,
nineteen of st. Philip, seventeen of St.
Andrew, seventeen of st. James, in as
many different churches. There is a
knee bone of st. Justinian. The Jaw
bones of saints are innumerable, there
being twenty of John the Baptist
alone. OF sanity hands there are nine
of st. Bartholomew, not to mention
numerous others. The skulls of these
holy personages appear also to have
been capable of indefinite repetition;
OF these it is only necessary to mention
the thirty or forty preserved in differ
ent churches that are said once to have
belonged to st. Julian. The most ex-
tensive collection of osseous relics is
that Of the eleven thousand virgins in
the Church Of st. Ursula at Cologne,
each separate bone of which is pre-
sumed to be capable of performing a
miracle. The mortal remains of maoy
saints who died in the early history of
the church were placed in caslsets,
which are worshipped by the faithful,
but the condition of their contents is
unknown, as it would be a horrible
sacrilege to open them.
Of all the ancient nations, only the
Egyptians have succeeded in preserv-
ing the remains of their sovereigns
for a respectable length of time. Not
a bone remains of the ancient rulers of
Greece or Rome. Some bones of
Charlemagne are preserved in the
cathedral of Blk la Chapelle. Not one
of any of his contemporaries is known
to be in existence. The remains of
the Plantagenet kings and queens
buried at Fontevrault Abbey were
torn from their caskets and scattered
to the four winds by the populace at
the time of the French revolution.
Those of the French sovereigns served
the same fate; but of the latter; if
euCA AooCAS Alny OC OcAAcVcu, Cn6re are
at the Louvre museum, though not on
exhibition, shoulder blade of Hugh
Capet, a thigh bone of Charles ", a
tibia each of Charles v. and Francis l..
vertebr@ of Charles VII, ribs of Louis
the Handsome and Louis XII, and the
lower jaw of Catherine de Medicis.
There is at Westminster abbey e very
considerable collection of royal coffins
containing what is left of the English
kings for some hundreds of year. back,
but the precise condition of the con-
tents is unknown. In other countries
the remains of sovereigns that date
back over five hundred years is linn
tied. The royal relics of this kind that
can claim an antiquity of three hum
dred years would not, by the most lib
eral calculation exceed a few score.
the Egyptian mummies being excepted.
OF the mortal part of the forty billion
of the race born and passed away in
the last one thousand years still exist
perhaps the fragments of the skeletons
of one thousand born before the year
&.