Dec. 25, 1 8 73 J 



NA TURE 



H5 



profession of a surgeon. Nevertheless, I have performed 

 hundreds of experiments ; and in the very rare cases 

 where great pain was inevitable, the performance has 

 been very distressing ; but in all cases I should vehe- 

 mently protest against the accusation that it was in- 

 difference or cruelty which enabled the experiments to be 

 performed. 



It is but right that I should acknowledge that Prof. 

 Foster's communication of December 1 1 has shown me 

 the error of my interpretation of his hypothesis. 



George Henry Lewes 



I WISH briefly to point out the grounds upon which 

 persons who are e\ery bit as tender-hearted and 

 as sympathetic with Nature as any ante-vivisectionist 

 may claim to be, justify what X. condemns. In 

 order that a part of the order of Nature may be ascer- 

 tained, it is necessary that vivisection be largely 

 practised. Those who practise it do so under a sense 

 of solemn and even sacred responsibility. To suggest 

 the word " cruelty " in connection with their proceed- 

 ings is an injustice which only profound ignorance and 

 inability to realise the motives of other men can excuse. 

 There is no lack of sympathy with the probable sufferings 

 of animals experimented upon in the mind of the physio- 

 logist. He suffers with them, and, as I know of one 

 eminent experimenter, is sometimes disabled by emotion 

 from continuing a research. But the recognition of a 

 higher duty than regard to his own transient impulses or 

 the brief sufferings of a lower animal usually completely 

 controls the experimenter's thought and action, and the 

 mutual suffering of both vivisector and vivisected becomes 

 a sacrifice offered up on the altar of Science. My con- 

 viction is that, especially in dealing with such animals as 

 the dog, the experimenter is no less constrained to inflict 

 suffering at which his feelings revolt, by the presence of a 

 noble ulterior motive, than is the surgeon who does not 

 flinch from subjecting his brother-man to the certainty of 

 the direst pain and the imminent risk of death. 



No one has a right to assume that any other man, still 

 less a whole body of men, is so fiendish as to take any 

 pleasure in the evidences of an animal's sufferings, or so 

 dull as not himself to feel distress when viewing those 

 sufferings. If man is willing to suffer this mental pain for 

 a high end, may he not exact some contribution from the 

 animal world, who after all will benefit as well as he by 

 the progress of Science. It is futile to bewail " the tre- 

 mendous cost " at which such progress is made. Nature is 

 inconceivably costly, if we choose to put things in that 

 way, for no progress is made without endless suffering 

 and immense destruction. Our very dinner-tables reek 

 with the evidences of " the tremendous cost " — the pangs 

 of slaughtered sheep, the groans of over-worked horses, 

 the disfigurement of Nature's sacred face by agriculture — 

 by which our corporeal means of progress is attained. 

 And are we to be so inconsistent as to refuse to under- 

 take the very highest occupation of humanity, the ascer- 

 tainment of the order of Nature, because it adds to this 

 " cost" of our existence ? 



The attempt to raise the question of the " rights " of 

 the animal world in this connection seems to me to in- 

 volve a very large assumption. I am not prepared to 

 admit that animals have any "rights " in the sense that 

 men have them. I could never subject a human being 

 to vivisection for the purposes of scientific progress for 

 much the same reason that, if starving among the 

 Arctic snows, I should feel bound to starve with my 

 companion, rather than kill and feed on him. The recog- 

 nition of the inviolability of one's fellow-man except 

 under conditions authorised by the community, is the 

 very foundation of human society, and our relations to 

 animals cannot in the remotest degree be assimilated to 

 the relation thus established between man and man. 

 Our conduct towards animals, as towards other living 

 and even inanimate things, must be determined in quite 



a different way, and by very different reasons. It is, I 

 am inclined to believe, solely the consideration of how 

 we ourselves are affected — whether injuriously or bene- 

 ficially — by any particular line of conduct towards beings 

 other than men, that can be allowed to guide us in 

 such matters. Anything of the nature of cruelty is ob- 

 viously thus condemned, and all wanton disrespect to the 

 persons of both living and inanimate things, no less so. 



Whilst thus refusing to admit anything like the " right " 

 claimed by man from man, for lower animals, we are 

 not led to regard them with less affection, nor to treat 

 them with diminished tenderness. The conviction that 

 they are ours with which to do what seems good to us, 

 must even increase our disposition to kindly treatment. 



Let cases of cruelty, whether from man to man, to 

 woman or child, to horse, fox, or dog, rabbit or frog, 

 be searched out, exposed, and the perpetrator condemned ; 

 but unless such persons as X. are prepared to accuse 

 such men as Michael Foster and George Henry 

 Lewes of specific acts of cruelty, they are not justified in 

 making physiology the text for heart-rending appeals to a 

 public imperfectly acquainted with the facts. 



E. R. L. 



THE THIRTY-TON STEAM-HAMMER AT THE 

 ROYAL ARSENAL, WOOLWICH 



FOR the past two years a stupendous undertaking has 

 been in course of development at the Royal .Airsenal, 

 Woolwich, which bids fair to rival in point of solidity and 

 grandeur of dimensions the works of ancient Egypt it- 

 self. We allude to the gigantic steam-hammer which is 

 being erected in the gun factories, for the purpose of weld- 

 ing more swiftly and efficaciously than can possibly be done 

 at present the coils of which such massive pieces of ord- 

 nance as ourmodem ''Woolwich Infants" consist. The first 

 phase in this undertaking, viz. the laying of an appropriate 

 foundation for the hammer, has now been accomplished, 

 and will be the subject of the present paper. The ham- 

 mer itself, which is still in an unfinished condition, al- 

 though rapidly approaching completion, will be treated of 

 subsequently. It is out of the question, in the com.pass 

 of a brief sketch, to give an adequate idea of all the 

 labour and thought that has been expended upon these 

 foundations, but an endeavour will be made to condense 

 as far as possible the most interesting part of their history 

 into a few words. 



The foundations were commenced in a soft, spongy 

 soil, which is the substratum upon which all the Arsenal 

 has been built. A hundred piles of pine-wood shod with 

 iron a foot square each, were driven into the earth so as 

 to form an area of thirty feet square ; and when the heads 

 were sawn off to an even surface, their average length was 

 18 feet 4 inches. Concrete was then filled in all round to 

 the top of the piles, and three cast-iron plates, weighing 

 respectively 30, 55, and 30 tons, were placed upon the 

 heads of the piles. But before proceeding further with 

 the building up of the foundations, we must describe the 

 nature of the castings alluded to. They were all run in 

 the foundr>' of the Royal Gun Factories, and consisted of 

 about one-fifth of Cakler pig-iron to four-fifths of scrap 

 metal containing old broken-up shell, and shot, &c. The 

 metal, after being taken from a number of cupolas in 

 which it was melted, was collected in huge reservoirs, 

 called "sows," and kept in a liquid state during the 

 time necessarily occupied in filling the sows by a quantity 

 of firewood being piled on top, which of course was 

 continually in a state of ignition. This process occupied 

 some eight or ten hours. At a given signal the sows were 

 tapped, and the iron run out into open sand moulds in 

 the floor of the foundry. The removal of these gigantic 

 castings to their destination was a matter involving con- 

 siderable difficulty. Two sets of worn-out gun-trucks 

 were laid down upon either side of the road, and planks 



