342 GENERAL TREATMENT. 



the Scottish Society of the same kind. But, judging from 

 the published extracts from the prize essays given in the 

 annual reports of the Edinburgh Society, I do not think 

 that at present such prizes realise their object, for the simple 

 reason that the stipulations, or conditions, which I have 

 above described as desirable, have not been laid down or 

 attended to. The offerers of the prizes seem to me to have no 

 proper idea of the aim they would set before the competitors. 

 6 Humanity to animals ' is a very vague term ; and inasmuch 

 as Sermons on the subject are perhaps at once the most 

 easily accessible, and most familiar literature on the subject, 

 it is not surprising that the resultant essays should be 

 virtually compilations from this ready, though not satis- 

 factory, quarry. For clergymen, as a rule, as well as teachers, 

 require instruction in natural history ; indeed, there is no 

 class of men more given to take even in subjects quite 

 beyond their ken, a < preacher's licence ' (which is as bad as 

 much of the ' poet's licence,' or as many a ' sailor's yarn,' 

 or 'village tale'), than the occupants of our pulpits; no 

 class is more in the habit of using simile, metaphor, fable, 

 parable, fiction; none more apt unwittingly to confound 

 fiction with fact, dogma with inference from fact. 



Some years ago I made an effort to carry out my own 

 views anent the objects to be set before school children 

 in prize competition for essays on ' Kindness to Animals,' 

 in Edinburgh a city long famed in this country for the 

 excellence of its educational arrangements. Among others 

 of its educational institutions, there is a whole series of 

 schools, under the patronage of the Merchant Company, 

 four or five large, handsome, in some cases university-like or 

 palatial, buildings, in the city and its suburbs, accommoda- 

 ting about 5,000 young people of both sexes, and of all ages, 

 from three or four up to eighteen or twenty, representing, 

 moreover, the poorer or lower, as well as the richer, middle, 

 and higher ranks of society, not only from every part of 

 Scotland, but probably also of the three kingdoms. Deem- 

 ing these Merchant Company Schools a suitable field for the 

 experiment, I submitted my proposal to the Master of the 

 Company at that time in office, a gentleman of high cul- 



