a "cover," where he finds a great number of dogs. The dogs are driven into the cover, and after a time there is seen escaping from it a beautiful dumb animal named a fox. The fox flies across the fields pursued by the dogs. The expression of its awful terror beggars our description, but still it is pursued, and the operator, who has come for the sole purpose, joins in the chase. As his horse flies along he explains why he has armed his boots with the revolving spikes. He plunges these spikes into the delicate sides of his horse to make it go even beyond its powers. As the sharp needles enter the sides of the animal the phenomena of reflex action are strikingly illustrated. The impression made by the needles on the sensitive peripheral terminations of the nerves derived from the dorsal and lumbar portions of the spinal cord, after being conveyed to their centres, are reflected upon the external abdominal muscles, causing sharp muscular twitches which are purely involuntary. Sometimes a little blood is lost in this experiment, but as a rule the wounds heal favorably and the animal is not materially injured. Meanwhile the fox, still pursued, after a run of some miles, rushes into a hole in the ground. He is then said to have run to earth, and if he cannot be reached by the dogs he is left there. By the chase to which he has been subjected there is often induced in him the disease now defined as heat tetanus. It consists of a peculiar and excruciating rigidity of the muscles, like that which follows upon the administration of strychnine. The tetanic spasm alternates with relaxation, but the condition is fatal. The tetanus may continue for so long a time as three days. After death, from an animal thus run to death, the body is in a state of rigid spasm. The death has taken place, indeed, from a general tetanic convulsion, in which the muscles of respiration have become involved.

Experiment 2. Production of complete muscular exhaustion, followed by death by the tearing of limb from limb.―The above experiment is usually considered a failure, and is followed, therefore, by another, in which all the steps of the operation are the same except the last. In this case the dumb animal, the fox, finding no hole in which to run, is hunted down by the dogs. The dogs seize the animal by different parts; one tears off a limb; another gnaws a large piece out of the side; a third tears away at the head, and a human assistant, lashing right and left at the dogs, makes a grab at the tail, which he commonly secures and presents to a lady if there be one present. The experimentalist himself takes an enthusiastic part in this division of the experiment; he regrets only that the death, though it is terribly severe, is rather short, and he follows a rule, as a finale, of raising himself a little in his saddle, at the

moment the tail of the fox is secured, and of shouting as loud as he can in signification, we believe, that the experiment is considered a success. One gentleman we know who delights greatly in this mode of animal experimentation bases his chief argument against the vivisectionists on the statement that they repeat, uselessly, several times painful physiological experiments. The experiments of the objector above detailed, which are quite as severe as any known from physiological research and are carried on without anæsthetics to the bitter end, have, it is fairly computed, been repeated by him five hundred and eightythree times. We need hardly say that the results have been entirely personal. They have ministered to the pleasure and happiness of the operator and his co-operators, and that is all. If any physiological experimentalist had subjected five hundred and eighty-three foxes to an experiment with the object of discovering or elucidating some great truth in science, however humanely he had carried out his research, he would be received with unmitigated execration. In his case it would have signified nothing how slight the experiment was, though it were the mere opening of a vein, nor how useful the intention. would be subjected to the penalties of insult, degradation, and, if possible, of trial and absolute ruin.

He

Experiment 3. Severe irritation of the peripheral nerves of the skin in a dog for the purpose of destroying an instinctive faculty. A very determinate opponent of animal experimentation is fond of dogs, and is horrified that they should ever be used by the physiologist. He has performed himself the following experiments. He has dogs which have the ability of pointing out in the fields the position of game. They are exceedingly intelligent and sensitive animals. In learning their art they sometimes, before the sportsman has fired, or while he is firing, run after the game. To break them of this instinctive faculty our experimentalist grasps the animal firmly by the back of the neck, and with a short whip, called "a dog whip," lashes it within an inch of its life. The screams of the unfortunate animal as it bears the torture are fearful to listen to, but they avail nothing. In some instances the animal, having inadvertently committed the instinctive offence a second time, is conscious, when he is called off, of the torture that is to follow. Then he approaches his master with penitent and imploring look, and even licks the hand that is about to smite him. The signs of obedience and affection are unheeded, the instinctive faculty must be cut out; again the instrument of torture is plied, and the screaming animal yells forth his agony and despair. At last, probably after a repetition of the process, the experiment succeeds.

The same result has been tried for by another process, viz. by lodging a charge of shot in the dog when he is at long range. The experiment may be successful, but there is the danger of it that the creature may be killed outright or seriously injured. It is therefore less frequently resorted to than the

first experiment.

The experimental gentleman in this department of mercy is particularly indignant that the physiological experimentalists should be such brutes as to use dogs for their researches. He would like in any new legislation on that matter to give the magistrates power to inflict something more than a fine on any physiologist who should be caught experimenting on his favourite animal. He thinks a month's imprisonment and twenty lashes should be the peremptory penalty on every clear conviction, and he wishes that he could not only direct but lay on the chastisement.

Experiment 4. Mode of producing death in a rabbit by pa. ralysis of the hinder limbs and starvation.—A gentleman who is a staunch opponent of animal experimentation was walking out with his gun in the evening time. On the edge of a rock there sat a rabbit that had just left her litter of young in a snug bed in a small adjoining warren. Hearing a noise, she essayed to leap from the rock, but was too late. The experimentalist with gunpowder and metallic shot had deliberately lodged a charge from his experimental tube into her loins. She fell down the rocks into a ravine near to where her young ones were concealed, and there she lay with her hinder limbs paralysed and one fore paw fractured by the fall. She was unable to move, even to the short distance where her young were nested. The pain in her injured limbs was excruciating, and to this was soon added the extreme agony of tension from the collection of milk in her mammary glands; but her great pain was that she could not reach her little ones to tend them and give them their food. Alas! poor animal, they were all dead from starvation long before she ceased to think of them and yearn for them. After some days of continued pain she became unconscious from want of sustenance, and at last, like her brood, died of starvation. The experimentalist who perpetrated this experiment, unable to find his prey or too careless to seek long for it, returned to dinner, and after enjoying consumedly some pâté de fois gras retired to his study and informed his friends of his willingness to pay his quota to the expenses required to try to secure a conviction of any miscreant physiologist who may be caught performing any operation whatever for any purpose whatever on a living animal.

Experiment 5. Production of gyratory movements in the pigeon by an injury to the nervous centres.-Another opponent of vivisection is fond of experimenting on pigeons by introducing forcibly into their bodies while they are flying small particles of lead. Sometimes the foreign bodies thus introduced strike a vital point, and the animal falls to the ground senseless or dead; but as the experiments are perfectly objectless and are made at random, they as frequently miss this fatal mark as hit it. In one case the experimentalist shot at a pigeon, which was observed in falling to make a number of gyrations and somersaults. When it reached the ground it rolled over and over again like a football and thus escaped. The phenomenon was much talked of afterwards by this gentleman as one of "the strangest things he had ever heard of in his life." If he had seen the end he would have known that the bird, owing to the nervous injury it had received, continued to carry on those strange rolling movements for nearly a week before it was fixed in death. He has had some other curious results of his experiments. Once a shot went into one eye of a bird and out of the other without killing the animal, and he kept it for some weeks as a curiosity. He thinks that the great evil of physiological experiment is that the fellows who lend themselves to it become such hardened brutes and set a bad example. He would stop them on that ground alone, but fancies it is, perhaps, a sufficient punishment to hold them up to public scorn and reprobation. His heart bleeds for the victims of their atrocious cruelty.

Experiment 6. Experiment for destroying the procreative faculties of animals by cutting and forcibly tearing away the glands.-This is an experiment largely carried out by many who are strongly opposed to vivisection. It is performed without the use of any anæsthetic, and often with disgusting details. It is an experiment horribly painful. One gentleman who belongs to the class of reformers now under consideration has it done wholesale on the lambs he breeds on his estate. He has the little creatures brought up to a table and held down with their fore and hind limbs extended; in simple language they are crucified. His assistant then cuts off from the scrotum of the lamb a portion of skin and forces one of the glands partly through the opening; then he seizes the gland between his teeth and tears it out by main force. The experiment is next repeated on the other side, and the success is considered certain. Before the animal leaves the operating table its tail is severed into two parts by an incision through it, with either fracture or dislocation of the bone. The mutilated victim, bleeding and

faint, is now set at liberty, but is often tormented for many days by flies, which attack the wounded surfaces. This same operation with the same avoidance of anæsthesia is also performed on other animals belonging to this eminent philanthropist, viz. dogs, cats, horses, and pigs. He is himself interested in the experiment and will spend some hours when the lambs are being crucified and experimented upon, watching with admiration the skill of his manipulator. But he is so fearfully disgusted with the French physiologist, Dr. Magnan, who "crucified" two dogs at Norwich, and injected absinthe and alcohol into the veins, that he calls this eminent foreigner "an incarnate French devil." He is disgusted with Mr. Colain, for not catching the reprobate in London, and, indeed, thinks the whole case was so shamefully botched that another society than that represented by the able and energetic officer named is urgently needed. He too would put a stop to physiological experiment of every kind and by every person. He believes the talk about the physiologists doing their work for the public good is all humbug. They do it for their own interests, and care no more for humanity than for the poor and helpless dumb animals that come into their hands.

Experiment 7. Method of transfixing an animal on a barbed point; test of the voluntary muscular power of a cold-blooded animal. Production of slow death by asphyxia, with marked evidence of a convulsive stage.-The experimentalist in this instance selects the large fish called a pike for his experiment. He prepares a sharp barbed piece of steel bent into the form of a hook. He conceals the hook with some food which the pike likes, and by the treacherous and cowardly method of laying this food in the path of his victim he induces the animal to swallow the barbed hook. So soon as he feels the creature has gulped the hook he drags the sharp and barbed fangs through the soft and delicate tissues, not heeding how far they pierce or what suffering they inflict. The fish, feeling itself thus transfixed, struggles to get away from its tormentor, and now comes an exciting part of the experiment. The fish is at one end of the line, the philanthropist at the other. The fish in its throes pulls, the philanthropist pulls, or gives a little line and then pulls again; thus, the test of the muscular power of the coldblooded animal is put to the severest and most awful trial, until, this muscular power failing, the philanthrophist conquers and brings his prey out of its watery element to dry land. Brought into an element in which it cannot breathe, the symptoms of asphyxia are developed in the fish. It becomes actively convulsed, and after a struggle of several minutes dies. The experimentalist who follows out this interesting method of