350 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



eight-ancl-forty hours, and was beginning to decompose, 

 yet no sooner did the scalpel touch the muscular foot, 

 than that foot shrank, as it would have shrunk in the 

 living animal. Was this pain ? Clearly not. It was 

 due to the irritability of the muscular tissue. 



Another observation made over the dissecting-table 

 is even more instructive. One of my Tritons had been 

 dead some time, and was pinned down on a cork plate 

 by the four paws. I had taken out the heart and lungs, 

 without exciting any obvious contraction, when, on 

 accidentally pricking the tail with the scalpel, I was 

 amazed to see it writhe ; repeating the prick, my 

 amazement increased as I saw the whole lower extrem- 

 ities twist and ^vrithe, so as to free the leo^s from the 

 pins which fastened them to the cork. A bystander 

 would have said that the animal must be suifering 

 pain ; yet on pricking the anterior extremities, the 

 ribs, the stomach, and the head, not a trace of sensi- 

 bility could be detected. Dead the animal assuredly 

 was. He had been dead some hours before I removed 

 his heart, yet sensibility remained apparently as active 

 as ever in the tail ; and on examination I observed this 

 sensibility decreased as I ascended from the tail up- 

 wards, disappearing altogether midway in the body. 



Up to this point, we have done little more than 

 destroy the value of the positive evidence which can 

 be adduced in support of the j)roposition that all 

 animals feel pam. As regards mere shrinking and 

 struggling, fighting, and crying, we see that the evi- 

 dence is null. If it should be said that aU animals 



