Maech'1, 1889.] 



♦ KNO^ATLEDGE ♦ 



109 



(as M. Zola would leid us to suppose) every other kind of 

 licence prevails, but where no licence is needed for vivi- 

 section. Your readers will reflect with satisfaction thxt 

 Boulogne boasts brighter attractions than that of freedom to 

 torment animals; else they would feel that the crossing of those 

 stormy waters of the Channel from Folkestone merely for 

 the sake of such experiments as are described by Mr. 

 Field in your columns, was altogether a Quixotic under- 

 taking on the part of that knight-errant of science. 



I have very little to say of Mr. Field's experiments. 

 They were by no means specially cruel, and he expresses an 

 amount of compas.sion for his little white- mouse victims, 

 which is quite a novel feature in the reports by physiologists 

 of their own doings. Like Walton's angler, he treats the 

 worm he puta on the hook " an' as if he loved it." But I 

 think that the repetition of the.'o everlasting tricks with 

 snakes and poi.soned animals, which form the " Chamber- 

 sport " of so many men of science, is a moral phenomenon 

 not undeserving of notice among the morbid vagaries of the 

 human mind. Mr. Field mentions Fontana's experiments, 

 and I have no doubt he has seen the edition of his great 

 work on the " Venom of the Viper," published just a 

 century ago (1787) by the John Murray of that day, wherein 

 the translator (a surgeon named Skinner) challenges our 

 confidence on behalf of his author in this portentous 

 sentence : — 



But what confidence ought not an autlior to inspire u.s with, 

 who, after having said, " I have made more than G.OOO experi- 

 ments ; I have had more than 4,000 animals bit ; I have employed 

 upwards of 3.000 vipers," finds no difficulty in adding, " I may have 

 been, mistaken, and it is almost hii/mssible that I hare not been 

 mistaken." 



Unless Mr. Field can flatter himself that he can greatly 

 overpass Fontana's forty hecatombs of unhappy animals 

 killed in this painful way, I do not see how he can flatter 

 himself with any hopes that he also will not be " mistaken " 

 in any discovery he may imagine himself to make. Truly 

 Dr. LefEngwell wrote well on this whole subject of vivi- 

 sectional experimentation when he said : "If animal pain 

 could be measured by money, there is no Mining Company 

 in the world which would sanction 2»'os2)ecting in such barren 

 re;/ ions." 



Mr. Field thinks that " he who hinders the progress of 

 such investigations commits a sin against mankind." I 

 venture to assert, on the other hand, that he who, for the 

 sake of remote and doubtful physical benefits to our race, 

 encourages a practice which, unquestionably and imme- 

 diately, must stifle the divine impuLses of compa-ssion and 

 pity in the human soul, is the real " sinner against mankind." 

 I have even some support for the further belief (though I 

 attach much less importance to it) that he who opposes 

 experimentations on animals is also a truer friend to 

 Science than he who promotes them. Mr. Lawson Tait, 

 one of the tir.st surgeons of the day, concludes his powerful 

 paper on the " Uselessness of Vivisection " by these note- 

 worthy words : — " 1 hope I have made it clear that, deeply 

 as I feel the strength of the objection to the practice of 

 vivisection upon the various grounds indicated at the begin- 

 ning of thLs paper, I urge against it a stronger argument — 

 that it has proved useless and misleading, and that in the 

 interests of true science its employment should be stopped, 

 so that the energy and skill of scientific investigators should 

 bo directed into better and safer channels." — I am, Sir, 

 truly yours, Frances Poweh Cobbk. 



Hengwrt, Dolgelly : February 7. 



To the Editor of Knowledge. 

 I have to thank the editor for giving me an oppor- 

 tunity of replying to Miss Cobbe's critioism on my paper in 



the last number. She quotes Sir Joseph Fayrer and Dr. 

 Lacerda as if they thought it useless to experiment further, 

 and had been converted from the errors of their ways ; but 

 neither of these vivisectors has given up vivisecting and 

 experimenting, as we must conclude that they would have 

 done if Miss Cobbe's interpretation of their words were 

 correct. 



The fact that an antidote has been discovered which is 

 capable of " coursing after and neutralising " the poison of 

 many viperine snakes renders it probable that a similar 

 antidote may be discovered for the poison of the colubrine 

 snakes and all the other venomous creatures which occa- 

 sionally endanger the life of man. 



Miss Cobbe is too impatient if she expects such dis- 

 coveries to be made on the first or second experiment ; our 

 steps to higher knowledge are made very slowly — generally 

 after repeated failures. She forgets the long series of 

 painful deaths which have brought about each step in the 

 survival of the fittest, and that Nature herself is far more 

 cruel than any man of science. What student of nature 

 is guilty of such cruelty as the Ichneumon fly, whose eggs 

 are deposited within the body of the living victim so as not 

 to destroy its life, and whose young, generation after genera, 

 tion, vivisect their hosts, carefully avoiding the vital parts 1 



I will not refer to the innuendoes of Miss Cobbe about 

 " the chamber sports of so many men of science," further 

 than to say that, as far as my experience goes, those who 

 study animals most closely have most sympathy with them, 

 and that those who follow most blindly what Miss Cobbe 

 calls " the divine impulses of compassion " are answerable 

 for a great deal of misery they do not see and do not con- 

 sider. Their sympathies follow an impulse which should be 

 controlled by thought. If sympathy is not so controlled, 

 there is such a tendency to sympathise with the weaker, 

 that criminals, and those who are physically unfit for the 

 battle of life among men and the lower animals, will come 

 in for all the sympathy and aid that had better be given to 

 the higher organisations, which Nature will continue to 

 select in spite of our puny eflbits to interfere with her 

 choice. Nature's way of replying to such interference is by 

 a slower and more lingering method of extermination, which 

 only multiplies the pain that would have originally been 

 given. A. J. Field. 



ABRAHAM SHARP'S SHORTHAND. 

 To the Editor of Knowledge. 



SiR,^I have seen, but have not had an opportunity of 

 examining, a specimen of Sharp's shorthand. It is ques- 

 tionable whether the system was an original one, as it is 

 referred to in the following terms by the editor of Dr. 

 Byrom's system, a work on shorthand published in 1767, 

 after Byrom's death : — 



" The first occasion of turning his attention that way 

 [referring to Byrom's study of the art of shorthand] arose 

 from his acquaintance with the late jNIr. Sharp, at Trinity 

 College, Cambridge. This gentleman's father, at that time 

 Archbishop of York, had recommended to his son to make 

 himself master of shorthiind iis an art very useful and com- 

 modious. Incited by an authority so respectable, the two 

 friends [Byrom and Sharp] ajjplied themselves to the stiuiy of 

 the method then in vogue ; but Mr. Byrom was so disgusted 

 with the absurdity and awkwardness of its contrivance that 

 ho soon threw it aside." 



Byrom consulted everything he could procure, in print or 

 manuscript, on the subject of shorthand, and pi-oduced a 

 new sy.stem which .soon became famous. 



My object in writing is to suggest that if a number of 

 Shai'p's shorthand memoranda, which I understiuid ai-e in 



