Notes . 
1S80. 
731 
Harrow, and seven other large schools ; twenty-one physicians 
and surgeons ; and thirty-seven peers, bishops, and members of 
parliament. The memorialists take the ground that vivisection, 
even with anaesthetics, should by law no longer be allowed, and 
they quote the opinions of Sir William Fergusson, Sir Charles 
Bell and Mr. Syme, that ‘ it has been of no use at all, and has 
led to error as often as truth.’ They add that the utility, if 
proved, would not, in this case, excuse the immorality of the 
practice Of the persons herein named as being in favour ol 
total abolition of viviseaion, Sir William Fergusson and Mr. 
Syme may be accepted as competent to express an opinion with 
as much authority as belongs to eminent surgeons of the past 
age, which believed in nothing new and practised rule of thumb. 
Of the remaining ‘ one hundred representative men probably 
not one knows anything whatever of the practices which he 
seeks to abolish, or of the results of those practices. Most of 
them are essentially ‘ emotionalists ’ who would sign any earthly 
manifesto on a humanitarian subject if only their bowels of 
compassion were sufficiently harrowed up by the falsehoods of 
which we know by experience that anti-viviseaion agitators are 
capable. They are all either professed philanthropists and reli- 
gionists whose signatures to such a document are a matter of 
course, or else they are well-intentioned people who are simply 
bored into signing without inquiry or serious thought. As 0 
the ‘ twenty-one physicians and surgeons ’ we covet further m- 
ormation. We should like to analyse the list to ascertain how 
many of them are simply traders on gushing philanthropy as a 
means of advertisement or of fee-getting ; or how many of them 
are of the fossil laudator temforis acti class, who are still scep- 
tical as to germ-theories, septicaemia, and evolution, and who 
believe in bleeding for a cold in the head. We wish the anti- 
viviseaors would offer us the name of even one single modern 
physician or surgeon of repute for learning and research who 
will go for total abolition of viviseaion. One such signature 
would be worth the whole hundred of peers, members of parlia- 
ment, poets, and schoolmasters, or of any number of the class 
of doarinarians who are in the habit of making up their minds 
without thinking and uttering manifestoes without learning. — 
Medical Press and Circular. 
M. Lortet describes in the “ Comptes Rendus ” (Sept. 13, 1880) 
the dredgings which he has undertaken in the Lake of Tiberias. 
This body of water has once been salt, and is still slightly 
brackish. The fauna holds an intermediate rank between those 
of fresh and of salt waters. Algae and Confervae were entire y 
absent. 
M. P. Hautefeuille communicates to the Academy of Sciences 
the observation that ozone at a high tension appears of a beau- 
tiful blue colour, which deepens as the pressure increases. 
