THE VIVISECTION CLAMOUR. 
403 
tion and pain in the basket of the angler ? Take the practice 
which exists in some rivers df fluking. A man lying forward in 
the bow of a boat floating over a sandy bottom, sees the fluke — 
the young plaice or sole — buried in the sand, then he thrusts 
his spear through the animal’s back, taking care that it pene- 
trates its body completely. Next he lifts the weapon, dis- 
engages the fluke by withdrawing the spear from its body, and 
allowing the unhappy victim to flounder to the bottom of the 
boat in most excessive agony, permits it to die, which it gener- 
ally does in about four hours; while he goes on spearing in most 
cases till he has five or six dozen of these flat-fish captured. 
Then, most of them still alive, they are strung on a switch of 
willow, which is passed through their gills and out of their mouth, 
and so are conveyed for miles to market. 
If the above is not cruelty, we know not what is. But it 
might be multiplied almost infinitesimally, if we were to obtain 
a return of the actual amount perpetrated throughout the 
country. 
And if now we compare with these several modes of cruelty, 
which are performed beneath the eyes of all, the methods of 
vivisection as they are practised in this country, what shall we 
see ? We first of all find that there are in the whole land 
not more than from twenty to thirty persons who have to do 
with physiological experiments which demand operations on 
animals. And again, we may suppose that they work, say ten 
months a year, and we will further suppose that on an average 
they have an operation to be performed on a mammalian animal 
about three times a week. We are now drawing a fair estimate. 
Well, and what is the cruelty? The animal is tied up and in 
the first instance is placed under the influence of chloroform. 
Then possibly — it being incapable of feeling the slightest pain — 
a knife is inserted in its abdomen and a bit of its intestine is 
tied, or its skull is partly removed to see the condition of its 
brain or to try experiments with galvanism ; or its heart or 
lungs are exposed for the purposes of conducting some experi- 
ment on circulation or respiration ; or it may be the absorption 
of fat by the lacteals that the experimenter wishes to determine. 
Well, the animal is kept under chloroform, save in some very 
special cases, during the operation. Then if the injury is very 
slight it is allowed to recover, if the destruction of tissues 
has been great it is, while still under chloroform, put an end 
to by the simple process of “ pithing.” 
And such cases as I have given an instance of, are, as we have 
seen, but few indeed when performed on the higher animals, as 
dogs and cats. Gruinea-pigs, frogs, and newts constitute the mass 
of the experimenter’s subjects, and we can say that there is 
never an example of the intense cruelty that many of the anti- 
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