June 1, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



875 



not provide any board of oflBcials competent to 

 testify to the fitness of the medical investigator. 



4. The advocates of anti- vivisection laws con- 

 sider themselves more humane and merciful 

 than the opponents of such laws. To my think- 

 ing these unthinking advocates are really cruel 

 to their own race. How many cats or guinea 

 pigs would you or I sacrifice to save the life of 

 our child or to win a chance of saving the life of 

 our child ? The diphtheria-antitoxin has already 

 saved the lives of many thousands of human 

 beings, yet it is produced through a moderate 

 amount of inconvenience and suffering inflicted 

 on horses and through the sacrifice of a moder- 

 ate number of guinea pigs. Who are the merci- 

 ful people — the few physicians who superintend 

 the making of the antitoxin and make sure of 

 its quality, or the people who cry out against 

 the infliction of any suflTering on animals on 

 behalf of mankind ? 



It is, of course, possible to legislate against 

 an improper use of vivisection. For instance, 

 it should not be allowed in secondary schools 

 or before college classes for purposes of demon- 

 stration only ; but any attempt to interfere with 

 the necessary processes of medical investiga- 

 tion is, in my judgment, in the highest degree 

 inexpedient, and is fundamentally inhuman. 

 Yours very truly, 



C. W. Eliot. 



Hon. James McMillan. 



A NATIONAL REPOSITORY FOB SCIENCE AND 

 ART. 

 A LECTURE was delivered at the Society of 

 Arts on May 18th by Professor Flinders Petrie 

 on ' A National Repository for Science and 

 Art.' Professor Petrie, as reported in the 

 London Times, said that the preservation of 

 material for study had become an urgent ques- 

 tion. Many of the sciences rested on proofs 

 and bases which were partly or entirely vanish- 

 ing. Looking at our present needs, and first 

 of all those which he knew of personally, he 

 asked where was the possibility of preserving 

 all the new world of prehistoric man that had 

 opened before us in the last 30 years. There 

 was scarcely a single burial preserved intact in 

 any museum, though they might see long rows 

 of objects from such tombs, divorced from all 



else that belonged to them. We had nothing 

 yet but stray examples of the prehistoric ages 

 of other countries. In Egypt alone the pre- 

 historic pottery extends to 900 varieties ; when 

 he made an offer to the British Museum he was 

 asked to send as few as possible. To get ten 

 square yards more in English museums was a 

 problem. The bulk of the Greek and Latin in- 

 scriptions that we possessed was stored in cellars 

 of the British Museum in the worst of lights. 

 When the earliest Greek tools were offered to the 

 British Museum they were declined as being too 

 ugly; and they were lost beyond recall. The sub- 

 ject of casts was a national scandal. As to the 

 last 1500 years the prospect was far worse. Of 

 our own architecture there was no collection, 

 except a small one belonging to the Institute 

 of British Architects. There was no home for 

 any remains of the innumerable buildings that 

 were wiped away by modern changes. Every 

 year the tribes of our Empire were dwindling, 

 becoming extinct, or merging with their rulers. 

 Our civilization had wiped out races at a greater 

 rate in this century than in any other of the 

 world's history. Yet there was no place where 

 the remains of these peoples and of their civil- 

 izations could be preserved. The study of 

 variations were only just beginning, and was 

 the key to the great question of species. Yet 

 series of hundreds or thousands of the same 

 objects, however needful, however irreplace- 

 able, could not be kept in existing museums. 

 The larger geological specimens were scarcely 

 ever preserved. Most of the remains of man 

 were irreplaceable, and to suppose that the re- 

 mains of all the past civilizations of the whole 

 world were to be compressed into one square fur- 

 long at Bloomsbury was manifestly absurd. At 

 the beginning of the century the British Museum 

 was begun in an airy suburb. At the end it 

 was in the midst of square miles of houses, 

 with land of high value around it. It is hope- 

 less to suppose that such a site could be fit for 

 the expansion of historical material. To say 

 that nothing should be preserved that was 

 not worth many pounds for each square foot 

 was to destroy all hopes of progress. Yet 

 we virtually did so by saying ' ' The price of 

 preservation is £5 or £10 per square foot ; per- 

 ish all that is not worth so much." Two very 



