288 



NATURE 



\July 24, 1879 



would be one of murder, and the latter one of unjustifiable 

 slavery. It is clear, therefore, that for the purpose of 

 lucid statement we ought to be supplied with some defini- 

 tion of the sense in which the author supposes the rights 

 of animals to be comparable with those of man. And it 

 is because this definition is nowhere supplied that we 

 deem the work unsatisfactory. That animals, as sentient 

 creatures, have some rights — i.e., that man may not kill 

 or torture them needlessly without incurring soine moral 

 blame — no one nowadays would undertake to dispute.'^ 

 It therefore seems useless to fill a number of pages with 

 a number of truisms on the theme that animals have 

 some rights in common with man. From the writer of 

 "a new essay in ethics" we expected to find a state- 

 ment of the principles by which the rights of animals 

 ought to be defined — in what they resemble and in what 

 they differ from the rights of man, and why. But instead 

 of this we find only the statement of a fact which it does 

 not require "a new essay ip ethics" to reveal, viz., that 

 the immorality of subjecting animals to needless death or 

 torture cannot be justified on the ground of any such 

 irrelevant or untrue arguments as that animals are irra- 

 tional, not immortal, or non-sentient. Such being the 

 whole scope of the work, it seems to us to be about a 

 century too late in appearing. 



At the present time, when the ethics of vivisection and 

 kindred questions are being so warmly discussed, there 

 is a good opportunity for a competent essayist to write an 

 interesting, if not valuable treatise, on the basis, the 

 nature, and the extent of animal rights, as well as the 

 ways and degrees in which these rights ought to be 

 respected by man. The latter subject is lightly touched 

 by Mr. Nicholson in his concluding chapter, entitled 

 " Limitations in Practice." His view appears to be that 

 man has no moral justification in taking the life of any 

 animal, which is not either directly " harmful" to himself 

 or in competition with him in "the struggle for food." 

 Therefore Mr. Nicholson considers it immoral to eat 

 shrimps and lobsters, seeing that they neither " hamper 

 man's comfort nor eat up his food." Criticism here is 

 sufficiently easy. Among animals themselves the only 

 right is might, and therefore if a lobster could argue with 

 a philosopher it is difficult to see on what grounds he 

 could convince the superior animal that the latter has less 

 right to eat him than has his brother lobster. If the 

 lobster were to urge that the philosopher is not merely an 

 animal but a moral animal, the philosopher might answer 

 that he cannot see any moral justification of the lobster's 

 view that the right of an edible animal to live is superior 

 to the right of an eating animal to kill. And if the 

 lobster were unfortunate enough to quote Mr. Nicholson 

 as an authority to prove that man has a moral right to 

 kill only "hurtful" animals, it would be competent for 

 the philosopher to reply that if man has a moral right to 

 promote his own happiness by killing animals which 

 cause him harm or annoyance, it is impossible to see why 

 he should not have a similar right to promote his own 

 happiness by killing all animals that serve him for food. 



' Dr. Whewell is probably the last of competent wiiters who has done so 

 in the past or is likely to do so in the future. It is remarkable, by the way, 

 that Mr. Nicholson does not quote the passage in which Dr. Whewell sneers 

 at Bentham for maintaining the rights of animals as sentient creatures, for 



this passage, especially as answered by Mill, would have gone further to 

 argue the existence of obtuseness upon this subject than does any other fact 

 which IS mentioned by Mr. Nicholson. 



Lastly, if the lobster were to argue that his enemy might 

 secure a doubly beneficial end by limiting his diet only 

 to such animals as are noxious, the philosopher would be 

 compelled to observe that he happened to prefer lobster 

 salad and roast lamb to boiled snakes and rat-pie. 



The same inconsistency of principle is displayed where 

 Mr. Nicholson treats of vivisection. He says "much 

 against my feelings I do see a warrant for vivisection in 

 the case of harmful animals and animals which are man's 

 rivals for food." But if man has a moral right to slay a 

 harmful animal in order to better his own condition, he 

 must surely have a similar right to slay a harmless 

 animal, if by so doing he can secure a similar end. And 

 of course it is the opinion of all sufficiently informed 

 persons that vivisection has been of more service in 

 bettering the condition of humanity than has the destruc- 

 tion, say, of wolves, bears, and tigers, wherever these 

 animals have been destroyed. 



OUR BOOK SHELF 



Proceedings of the Aberdeenshire Agricultural Associa- 

 tion, 1878. 



We have already noticed the earlier field experiments 

 made by this Association. The most prominent fact 

 which they believe they have established is the efficacy of 

 mineral phosphates, when in fine powder, as a manure 

 for turnips. Such phosphates have always been treated 

 with sulphuric acid, and converted into superphosphate 

 before being employed as manure ; to employ them in 

 fine powder without this previous treatment would of 

 course be more economical, if they are in this state suffi- 

 ciently effective. 



It would be easy to criticise the experiments on which 

 the above conclusion is based ; we might especially point 

 out the very different results which the same manure has 

 yielded on different plots of the same land. The manure 

 has also apparently been incorporated with the soil in a 

 far more perfect manner than would be possible in agri- 

 cultural practice, and the solvent action of the soil has 

 thus been greatly aided. We must leave therefore any 

 conclusion as to the feasibility of employing finely- 

 powdered apatite or coprolite as a manure until repeated 

 trials have been made on a large scale. There are, how- 

 ever, a few facts in the chemistry of the question to which 

 we should like to call attention. 



If we were asked to describe a soil which should exer- 

 cise the greatest solvent action on phesphate of calcium, 

 we should certainly name one containing much humic 

 matter, and little or no carbonate of calcium. The humic 

 matter, and the carbonic acid produced from it, would act 

 as a tolerably powerful solvent for the phosphate, if car- 

 bonate of calcium were not present to neutralise their 

 efficacy. Now the granite soils of Aberdeen belong pre- 

 cisely to the class of soil just described ; if, therefore, it 

 should be finally proved that finely-powdered mineral 

 phosphates are almost as effective as superphosphate on 

 land of this character, it will by no means follow that the 

 same result will be obtained if the phosphate is applied to 

 other soils, and especially to those derived from lime- 

 stone rocks. 



As to the effect of nitrogenous manures on the turnip 

 crop, the conclusion first arrived at by the Association 

 has been somewhat modified. In the previous report it 

 was stated that the only effect of nitrogenous manure was 

 to increase the amount of water in the crop ; this extra- 

 ordinary conclusion has not been confirmed by the suc- 

 ceeding experiments. As the turnip crop contains a 

 large amount of nitrogen as a necessary constituent, it 

 is clearly ridiculous to speak of nitrogenous manures as 



