98 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



commiseration on account of all it has done and suffered 

 to increase our knowledge. In every physiological labora- 

 tory frogs are such ceaseless subjects of experiment that 

 the animal may well be called the "martyr of science." 

 What their legs can do without their bodies, what their 

 bodies can do without their heads, what their arms can 

 do without either head or trunk, what is the effect of the 

 removal of their brains, how they can manage without 

 their eyes, what effects result from all kinds of local 

 irritations, from chokings, from poisonings, from mutila- 

 tions the most varied ? These are questions again and 

 again answered practically for the instruction of youth, 

 while the most delicate and complex researches are 

 carried on through their aid by the very first physio- 

 logists of Europe. We know by the unhappy instances 

 of men who have had their backs broken, that unmistak- 

 able results may be produced through irritations which 

 are entu^ely unfelt. A patient may be induced to with- 

 draw his foot when its sole is tickled with a feather, 

 though he be utterly unconscious of both the tickling 

 and the motion of his foot which it induces. Following- 

 up the indication thus given, it has been found that a 

 frog, the head of which has been cut off, will raise one 

 of its feet to rub a spot purposely irritated by some 

 corrosive fluid, and that when the foot so raised is held or 

 cut off, that then the other foot will be applied, instead, to 

 the irritated surface. It is thence concluded, as a matter 

 of course, that, the head being removed, the frog can no 

 longer feel. We do not for a moment believe that it can 

 feel, but we are bound to affirm that it is not evident to us 

 that it cannot do so. We know nothing about even our 

 own sensations except through the conscious intellect 

 which accompanies our experience of them; what our 

 mere " feeling " apart from that accompaniment may 



