ANIMAL REASON. 35 



ing such forms of apparent hostility. I have often, by such 

 means, shown the cowardice of pet dogs that were supposed 

 by their mistresses to be very brave, because of their incessant 

 barking at, and bold front to, strangers. On the other hand, 

 a kindly look, a gentle tone, a friendly advance is seldom 

 misunderstood unless by the poor animal that has been 

 rendered suspicious and timorous by its experience of human 

 treachery and cruelty. In other words, there is nothing 

 easier than for any man, woman, or child, to give to him- or 

 her-self practical or experimental lessons in the power of 

 human kindness to bring out in response all the better or 

 finer features of an animal's nature, and of human cruelty 

 to develope all the worse ones in man's influence, therefore, 

 for good and evil over the lower animal world. 



Some of the experiments that have been made upon 

 animals may appear to be, or are really, cruel and unnecessary 

 at least in their repetition for instance, those relating to 

 or involving 



1. The action of alcohol, laughing gas, chloroform, opium, 

 belladonna, and many poisons. 



2. Mutilation or vivisection, including removal of the 

 head or brain, or portions of either or both. 



3. Self-destruction in scorpions. 



4. Various kinds of deception in the form of practical 

 jokes or otherwise leading sometimes to the death of 

 the animals experimented on, including the substitution of 

 the eggs of different species of birds, or of stones or other 

 bodies, in the nest of a hatching mother-bird. 



5. Destruction of beaver dams, birds' nests, and spiders' 

 webs. 



There are, then, certain directions in which experiment 

 need not be extended or repeated, especially by the general 

 public. But, on the other hand, there are many directions 

 in which extended or renewed experiment is not only legiti- 

 mate but desirable, at or in the hands of persons of average 

 intelligence and feeling, possessed of the necessary acquire- 

 ments the power of, or facility in, observing and recording 

 facts, fertility of resource, and an acquaintance with what 

 has been already done on the one hand, and what remains 



