OS ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION 



(p. 473-4.) Referring to the bill actually adopted, 

 Leonard Huxley says, 1 " The evidence on the strength 

 of which legislation was recommended went beyond 

 the facts, the report went beyond the evidence, the 

 recommendations beyond the report, and the bill can 

 hardly be said to have gone beyond the recommenda- 

 tions, but rather to have contradicted them." 



(p. 474.) "As to the working of the law Huxley 

 referred to it the following year in the address, already 

 cited, on ' Elementary Instruction in Physiology.' ' 

 (Coll. Essays, iii. 310.) 



" But while I should object to any experimentation 

 which can justly be called painful, and while as a 

 member of a late Royal Commission I did my best to 

 prevent the infliction of needless pain for any purpose, 

 I think it is my duty to take this opportunity of ex- 

 pressing my regret at a condition of the law which 

 permits a boy to troll for pike or set lines with live 

 frog bait for idle amusement, and at the same time 

 lays the teacher of that boy open to the penalty of fine 

 and imprisonment if he uses the same animal for the 

 purpose of exhibiting one of the most beautiful and 

 instructive of physiological spectacles the circula- 

 tion in the web of the foot. No one could undertake 

 to affirm that a frog is not inconvenienced by being 

 wrapped up in a wet rag and having his toes tied out, 

 and it cannot be denied that inconvenience is a sort 

 of pain. But you must not inflict the least pain on a 

 vertcbratcd animal for scientific purposes (though you 

 may do a good deal in that way for gain or for sport) 

 without due license of the Secretary of State for the 

 Home Department, granted under the authority of 

 the Vivisection Act. 



" So it comes about that, in this year of grace 1877, 

 1 Quoting " Nature," 1876, p. 248. 



