48 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 367. 



bishops of his own land with A\'hoin he so 

 often did battle with delight. 



As a specific illustration of the need of 

 watchfulness concerning the privilege of 

 dissection in the public schools I may cite 

 what took place in Boston a few years ago. 

 Those who happened at the time to be 

 living in that city awoke one morning in 

 January, 1894,. to find that on the previous 

 evening a member of the Boston School 

 Committee had offered the following order 

 and that it had been unanimously passed. 



' ' Ordered : That the dissection of ani- 

 mals be prohibited in the public school 

 buildings of the city of Boston. ' ' 



Realizing how damaging a rule of this 

 sort must inevitably be to the best interests 

 of science in the public schools, I hastily 

 drew up the following petition to the School 

 Committee and secured for it the signatures 

 of President Eliot, General Walker, Pro- 

 fessor Agassiz and a few other leaders in 

 science or education in or near Boston : 



' ' To the School Committee of the city 

 of Boston: 



' ' We have learned with surprise and 

 regret of the prohibition which you have 

 placed upon the dissection of animals in 

 the public school buildings of Boston. We 

 earnestly protest against this action and 

 urge its immediate reversal, believing that 

 such a prohibition will seriously weaken 

 the efficiency of science-teaching in the 

 schools and completely cripple the courses 

 in zoology and physiology. As the order 

 stands, no one, not even a head-master, is 

 allowed to dissect, in any of the school 

 buildings, so much as a fish or an oyster." 



(Signed) Charles W. Eliot, Francis A. 

 Walker, A. Agassiz, Mrs. Louis Agassiz, 

 Josiah P. Cooke, Augustus Lowell, Alice 

 Freeman Palmer, Samuel Eliot, Mary 

 Hemenway, Mrs. W. B. Rogers, H. P. Boav- 

 ditch. 



I also took pains to make the matter 

 Imown through the press, and the result 



was that at the next meeting of tbe School 

 Committee the order Avas reconsidered, 

 amended and finally passed in a less objec- 

 tionable form, as follows: 



' ' Obdeeed : That dissection of red- 

 blooded animals be confined to normal and 

 high schools when approved by the super- 

 intendent and masters. ' ' 



This perhaps is as good a place as any 

 in which to urge upon all those within 

 sound of my voice, or before whom this 

 siibject may come upon the printed page, 

 and who desire to keep intact the freedom 

 of science and education, the necessity of 

 Avatchingjin season and out of season, to repel 

 the attacl^s of that propaganda which would 

 not only compel all practical instruction in 

 physiology to be based upon pictures and 

 manikins, but Avould also prohibit altogether 

 all experimentation upon animals, Avhether 

 in physiology, bacteriology or experimental 

 medicine. Science in Great Britain, as has 

 already been stated, has been brought 

 under an almost intolerable subjection by 

 the anti-Anvisection propaganda. In Amer- 

 ica, though long threatened, this has not yet 

 come to pass; but unless naturalists every- 

 where are on their guard they Avill some day 

 be taken by surprise, very much as the Eng- 

 lish naturalists seem to have been, and be 

 brought under a similar subjection to the 

 same hostile propaganda. 



But if in America Ave can rejoice that Ave 

 have thus far resisted the onslaughts of 

 philozoists upon experimental science, Ave 

 must confess Avith sorroAV that Ave have been 

 less fortunate in dealing Avith philan- 

 thropists, in an important department of 

 elementary education. When, in 1842, 

 Horace Mann published his still excellent 

 essay on ' The Study of Physiology in 

 Schools,' he seems, judged by recent 

 school statutes of the several LTnited 

 States, to have made one serious omission, 

 for he noAAdiere mentions or even fore- 

 shadoAvs that remarkable creation of our 



