LATER WORKS AND FRIENDSHIPS 171 



influence very widely felt on their behalf ; he was 

 quick to seize an opportunity for saying or doing 

 something for them, and this quite as much in 

 what are generally deemed small matters as in those 

 of greater consequence. He would no more have 

 passed by without concern the suffering of an insect 

 any more than he would that of a horse that was 

 being cruelly oppressed by its driver. 



It may have been the passing of the Education 

 Act of 1870, which at that time increased people's 

 interest in the training of the young all through the 

 country, that gave my father the idea of introducing 

 the subject of humanity to animals into the curri- 

 culum of schools, thus laying in the minds of the 

 young principles of kindness and gentleness towards 

 those animals with which they had or might have to 

 do in their daily work. To this end he began to 

 compile, in the year 1872, a series of reading-books 

 for schools, which he called the " Humanity Series 

 of Schoolbooks," consisting of six small volumes 

 graduated so as to suit the six standards in elemen- 

 tary schools. They were probably the first series of 

 the kind ever published, and although the volumes 

 were not illustrated, and their outward appearance 

 was hardly worthy of so interesting and important 

 a subject, they nevertheless had for many years a 

 considerable circulation. Had more attention been 

 paid to the general external attractiveness of the 

 books, and a few minor improvements made in the 

 contents, there can be little doubt that their useful- 

 ness would have kept pace with the great advance 



