gto General Notes. [September, 
the garden. As soon as they were all in he looked up with a 
proud and pleased expression, as much as to say: “Isn’t that a 
clever piece of strategy?” We all thought it was. But in num- 
berless incidents of a similar nature “Trip” has proved himself 
to be a dog of excellent sense and judgment—and often of “ rare 
we ability.” — Charles Aldrich, Webster City, Iowa, Fuly I1, 
1885. ; 
Do THE LOWER ANIMALS SUFFER PAIN?—As bearing on this 
question so often asked, we may quote the following statements 
from Romanes’ “ Jelly-Fish, Star-Fish and Sea-Urchins ”: Before 
any rational scruples can arise with regard to the vivisection of a 
living organism, some reasonable ground must be shown for sup- 
posing that the organism, besides being living, is also capable of 
suffering. But no such reasonable ground can be shown in the 
case of these low animals. We only know of such capability in 
any case through the analogy based upon our own experience, 
and, if we trust to this analogy, we must conclude that the ca- 
pability in question vanishes long before we come to animals so 
ow in the scale as the jelly-fish or star-fish. For within the 
limits of our own organism we have direct evidence that the 
nervous mechanisms, much more highly elaborated than any of 
those which we are about to consider, are incapable of suffering. 
us, for instance, when the nervous continuity of the spinal 
cord is interrupted, so that a stimulus applied to the lower ex- 
tremities is unable to pass upwards to the brain, the feet will be 
actively drawn away from a source of irritation without the man 
being conscious of any pain; the lower nervous centers in the 
spinal cord respond to the stimulation, but they do so without 
Jeeling the stimulus. In order to feel there must be conscious- 
ness, and, so far as our evidence goes, it appears that conscious- 
ness only arises when a nerve-center attains to some such e- 
gree of complexity and elaboration as is to be met with in 
the brain. Whether or not there isa dawning consciousness in 
any nerve-centers considerably lower in the scale of nervous 
evolution, is a question which we cannot answer; but we may be 
quite certain that, if such is the case, the consciousness which 1s 
present must be of a commensurately dim and unsuffering kind. 
Consequently, even on this positive aspect of the question, we 
may be quite sure that by the time we come to the jelly-fish— 
where the object of the experiments in the first instance was to 
obtain evidence of the very existence of nerve-tissue—all ques- 
_ tions of pain must have vanished. Whatever opinions, therefore, 
__ We may severally entertain on the vexed question of vivisection 
as a whole, and with whatever feelings we may regard the “ blind 
` fury ” who, in the person of the modern physiologist, “ comes 
_ with the abhorred shears and slits the thin-spun life,” we should 
be all agreed that in the case of these animals the life is so very thin- 
pun that any suggesti stion of abhorrence is on the face of it absurd. 
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