GENERAL TBEATMENT. 341 



prizes, pecuniary or others, offered not only in schools, but in 

 colleges ; not only to pupils, but to teachers ; prizes, in short, 

 open for competition to all ages and both sexes. But the 

 object of such prizes should be not a homily, sermon, or 

 essay of the hackneyed kind, on ' humanity to animals,' based 

 on, and consisting of, Scripture references, or quotations 

 from theologians and poets, with comments thereon, by way 

 of padding. Such rewards should subserve the several pur- 

 poses of 



1. Developing the observative faculties of the young, by 

 calling upon them to confine their illustrations of animal 

 intelligence to what they have themselves seen, to describe the 

 mental peculiarities, habits, eccentricities, of their own cats, 

 dogs, canaries, parrots, and so forth. 



2. Directing their attention to moral, mental, or physical 

 sensitiveness ; to the influence of education ; to the mighty 

 power of kindness ; to the higher mental faculties thought, 

 reflection, generalisation rather than to the common virtues 

 of courage and fidelity. 



3. Leading them to experiment on animals in a perfectly 

 harmless and legitimate way, involving no vivisection, or 

 even suffering of any kind ; to test an animal's powers of 

 observation, thought, inference, its capacity for progress. 



4. Contrasting, in boys and girls, the relative powers of 

 observation, inference, narrative, diction, or composition. 



5. Creating or developing natural history tastes of a kind 

 that necessitate healthy out-door work-, establishing resources 

 that may be of the utmost consequence in after years, as a 

 substitute, in girls, for instance, for the trashy ' fancy work,' 

 to which they devote so much time that, properly employed, 

 might become, and be termed, valuable ; as a substitute, in 

 boys, for pipes, beer, billiard-rooms, theatres, and the other 

 debasing 'enjoyments' (Heaven save the mark!) to which 

 they too frequently devote their business leisure. 



Much has been done in the way of prize-offering for 

 essays on humanity to animals by the Baroness Burdett- 

 Coutts, through the medium of the London ' Eoyal Society 

 for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals ; ' and on a greatly 

 minor scale, by those offered to the schools of Edinburgh by 



