EMBALM, v.i. To cheat vegetation by locking up the gases upon which
it feeds. By embalming their dead and thereby deranging the natural
balance between animal and vegetable life, the Egyptians made their
once fertile and populous country barren and incapable of supporting
more than a meagre crew. The modern metallic burial casket is a step
in the same direction, and many a dead man who ought now to be
ornamenting his neighbor's lawn as a tree, or enriching his table as a
bunch of radishes, is doomed to a long inutility. We shall get him
after awhile if we are spared, but in the meantime the violet and rose
are languishing for a nibble at his _glutoeus maximus_.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
