Sir H. Thompson has another article on Cremation in the
Contemporary, in which he answers his critics, and among them the Spectator. He makes, however, one or two curious mistakes. He says, or implies, that we attacked his veracity about some figures. We did nothing of the kind. We said expressly that while they seemed debateable, we would not argue with so emi- nent a physicist, that is, we distinctly preferred his authority to our own judgment ; surely no attack of any kind. In the second case Sir Henry is under a misapprehension. We said mankind were diminishing their reservoir of coal and their rainfall at
railway speed ; and he asks contemptuously, how any con- ceivable consumption of water could appreciably affect the rainfall. We never intended to imply any such absurdity. Our meaning, so constantly repeated that we thought every reader of the Spectator would understand it, was that mankind were, by the incessant cutting down of forests which are never replanted, 'diminishing the rainfall. If that is a blunder, it is a blunder repeated by some of the most experienced observers in the world.
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