288 MISCELLANEA. [Ch. XV. 



this much, driving Mr. Darwin, lie would have got out of the 

 carriage and abused me well." 



With respect to the special point under consideration, — the 

 sufferings of animals subjected to experiment, — nothing could 

 show a stronger feeling than the following words from a letter 

 to Professor Ray Lankester (March 22, 1871) :— 



" You ask about my opinion on vivisection. I quite agree 

 that it is justifiable for real investigations on physiology ; but 

 not for mere damnable and detestable curiosity. It is a sub- 

 ject which makes me sick with horror, so I will not say another 

 word about it, else I shall not sleep to-night." 



The Anti- Vivisection agitation, to which the following letters 

 refer, seems to have become specially active in 1874, as may be 

 seen, e.g. by the index to Nature for that year, in which the 

 word " Vivisection " suddenly comes into prominence. But 

 before that date the subject had received the earnest attention 

 of biologists. Thus at the Liverpool Meeting of the British 

 Association in 1870, a Committee was appointed, whose report 

 defined the circumstances and conditions under which, in the 

 opinion of the signatories, experiments on living animals were 

 justifiable. In the spring of 1875, Lord Hartismere intro- 

 duced a Bill into the Upper House to regulate the course of 

 physiological research. Shortly afterwards a Bill more just 

 towards science in its provisions was introduced to the House 

 of Commons by Messrs. Lyon Playfair, Walpole, and Ashley. 

 It was, however, withdrawn on the appointment of a Royal 

 Commission to inquire into the whole question. The Commis- 

 sioners were Lords Cardwell and Winmarleigb, Mr. W. E. 

 Forster, Sir J. B. Karslake, Mr. Huxley, Professor Erichssen, 

 and Mr. R. H. Hutton: they commenced their inquiry in 

 July, 1875, and the Report was published early in the 

 following year. 



In the early summer of 1876, Lord Carnarvon's Bill, entitled, 

 " An Act to amend the Law relating to Cruelty to Animals," 

 was introduced. The framers of this Bill, yielding to the 

 unreasonable clamour of the public, went far beyond the re- 

 commendations of the Royal Commission. As a correspondent 

 writes in Nature (1876, p. 248), " 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 Recommendations; but rather to have con- 

 tradicted them." 



The legislation which my father worked for, was practically 

 what was introduced as Dr. Lyon Playfair's Bill. 



