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taste of the bon vivant may be sufficiently pleased ? Or does 
he eat his lobster or crab, and does he know how they are pre- 
pared ? Is he ignorant of the fact that they are kept out 
of water for hours, which has somewhat the same effect as 
though he were being submerged for half-a-minute say every 
five minutes in the twenty-four hours. But that is not all. 
A cauldron of boiling, steaming water is ready, and into this 
the still living crab or lobster, shrimp or prawn, is at once 
plunged. Just conceive for a moment the agony the poor brute 
must suffer ! 
Better still, let him reflect on his oyster- eating habits. A 
poor oyster is at least a couple of days out of his native ele- 
ment. Still he has sufficient liquid floating about his gills — 
and how beautiful these gills are the microscopist alone knows 
— to keep him alive till the moment that anti-vivisectionist 
begins his dinner or supper. Then is a knife passed through 
his gills and across his muscles that close the valves ; next for 
a few seconds he is tortured by having some burning compound 
poured — as oil upon his wounds — upon him, and, finally, in a 
moment, while still in a dying state, is he plunged into the 
mouth and stomach of the man or woman who grieves so loudly 
over vivisection. 
Is it not wonderful in this, which is especially the Age of 
Reason, to see so much of absolutely arrant nonsense talked 
by people whom we should take in other respects for sensible 
persons. Christ’s argument is the most potent one in this case, 
and well may the vivisectionist say, “ Let him that is without 
sin among you cast the first stone.” Assuredly if they are any- 
where, the Pharisees are among our opponents. 
If we wanted further evidence of cruelty of the most 
painful kind, but which is yet absolutely unavoidable, we have 
only to go to any of our sea-side fishing villages. There we 
can see whole boat-loads of crabs slowly dying, which are torn 
limb from limb in the still existing condition to form bait for 
the fishermen. Again, look at the millions — nay, the billions — of 
herrings, pilchards, not to mention other salt-water fish that are 
caught on our own coasts year after year. Are they chloroformed 
or even killed at once ? Assuredly not ; they are allowed slowly to 
die of suffocation, not sudden, as in the case of a man who is 
drowning, but gradual suffocation, which takes some hours to 
complete. Then let us take fresh-water fish. Is not the sal- 
mon, if he is caught on the line, sometimes put to torture for 
half-an-hour or more, and is he not then most cruelly dealt 
with — a large, bent spear, the gaff it is called, is driven through 
his body and thus he is brought to land ? Again, the trout, or 
perch, or roach, &c., is he not taken with a hook which pierces 
his mouth, and is he not then allowed to die the death of suffoca- 
