4 i 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the same side, and applies the foot to rubbing off the acetic acid ; and 

 what is still more remarkable, if you hold down the limb, so that the 

 frog cannot use it, he will, by-and-by, take the limb of the other side 

 and turn it across the body, and use it for the same rubbing process." 



This goes a step further, requiring a more complicated mechanism 

 to direct the force, when it fails to move one foot, to the movement of 

 the other. In still another case, he says: "Suppose the foremost two- 

 thirds of the brain taken away, the frog is then absolutely devoid of 

 any spontaneity; it will remain forever where you leave it; it will not 

 stir, unless it is touched ; . . . but, ... if you throw it in the water, 

 it begins to swim swims just as well as the perfect frog does ; . . . 

 and the only way we can account for this is, that the impression made 

 on the sensory nerves of the skin of the frog by the contact of the 

 water conveys to the central nervous apparatus a stimulus which sets 

 going a certain machinery by which all the muscles of swimming are 

 brought into play in due order of succession. Moreover, if the frog 

 be stimulated, be touched by some irritating body, although we are 

 quite certain it cannot feel, it jumps or walks as well as the complete 

 frog can do." 



Most persons, I presume, have seen men and other animals made 

 so torpid by injury or disease, that they would show little sign of 

 vitality, and great indisposition to make any effort, but that they still 

 moved when pricked with a pin has been generally regarded as evi- 

 dence that they still felt ; and the movements they would make to 

 avoid danger, or escape pain, have been thought to be conclusive that 

 they were not " absolutely devoid of any spontaneity." 



It is not uncommon for a man, who, in ordinary circumstances 

 seemed wholly imable to move his limbs, under great or sudden ex- 

 citement, as the approach of fire or sudden apprehension of drowning, 

 to make vigorous and successful muscular efforts. 



The common observer, then, would infer from the foregoing ex- 

 periments that Prof. Huxley was not justified in inferring, from the 

 fact of mutilation, that the frog was " absolutely devoid of any spon- 

 taneity," and that " we are quite certain it cannot feel." If the facts 

 stated do not prove that the frog still feels, still wills, and still has 

 knowledge to direct its efforts to get rid of the irritation, it seems 

 difficult to devise any mode of proof that a being ever feels, knows, or 

 wills. Prof. Huxley admits that we do feel and know, but infers from 

 these experiments that we do not will. If his theory of them is cor- 

 rect, they seem to afford little ground for this distinction. 



Prof. Huxley, in still another case, says of a frog deprived of the 

 most anterior portion of the brain, that "it will sit forever in the 

 same spot. It sees nothing, it hears nothing," yet placed on the hand 

 would, on the turning of the hand, make all the movements necessary 

 to prevent its falling off, and that "these movements are performed 

 with the utmost steadiness and precision, and you may vary the posi- 



