from the
ground, somewhat resembling pigeon-towers; these strange dove-cotes are
built to receive the bodies of such babies as die too young to have
fully developed souls, and therefore there is no necessity to waste
coffins on them, or even to take the trouble of burying them in the
bosom of mother earth. So the insignificant little corpse is handed over
to a coolie, who, for the sum of forty _cash_, equal to about five
cents, carries it away, ostensibly to throw it into one of these towers;
but if he should not choose to go so far, he gets rid of it somehow,--no
questions are asked, and there are plenty of prowling dogs ever on the
watch seeking what they may devour. To-day several poor uncoffined mites
were lying outside the towers, shrouded only in a morsel of old
matting--apparently they had been brought by some one who had failed to
throw them in at the window ('about twelve feet from the ground'), in
which, by the way, one had stuck fast!

"Some of these poor little creatures are brought here alive and left to
die, and some of these have been rescued and carried to foundling
hospitals. The neighbourhood was so pestiferous that we could only pause
a moment to look at 'an institution' which, although so horrible, is so
characteristic of this race, who pay such unbounded reverence to the
powerful dead who could harm them. Most of the bodies deposited here are
those of girl babies who have been intentionally put to death, but older
children are often thrown in."

With regard to this, I will only say that I lived all together for over
four years within a mile or so of these Towers, which I frequently
passed during the evening walk; and so far from ever seeing "several
poor uncoffined mites lying outside the towers, shrouded only in a
morsel of old matting," which Miss Gordon Cumming has described, I never
even saw one single instance of a tower being put to the purpose for
which it was built, viz.: as a burying-place for the dead infants of
people too poor to spend money upon a grave. As for living children
being thrown in, I think I shall be able to dispose of that statement a
little later on. Miss Gordon Cumming did not add that these towers are
cleared out at regular intervals by a Chinese charitable society which
exists for that purpose, the bodies burnt, and the ashes reverently
buried.

Mrs. Bird-Bishop, the traveller, is reported to have stated at a public
lecture in 1897, that "one of the most distressing