1882.] 
; 371 ) 
NOTES. 
Our attention has been called to the following letter in the 
“ National Reformer ” : — “ The Anti-ViviseClionists have already 
earned an unenviable notoriety by their reckless statements and 
their indifference to rigid accuracy. Another instance of this 
failing has occurred in reference to myself. A few days ago an 
official from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals 
called upon me. The official was courtesy itself, but he was 
obliged to inform me that a communication had been received by 
the Society to the effeCt that I was in the habit of performing 
vivisections almost daily; that I had many students who took 
part in these experiments; and that many carriages, bearing 
fashionable ladies, came to my door. To all these statements I 
gave a most emphatic denial. Every one of them is entirely 
false. Since I have been at Newman Street I have never per- 
formed one aCt of vivisection. I have not that license which 
places scientific investigators, in one respeCt, on a level with 
tobacconists and publicans. No pupil of mine has ever seen a 
vivisection performed by me. The carriages and the fashionable 
ladies and gentlemen come to visit an estimable maker of guns 
who lodges beneath me. The official and Mr. Colam, the secre- 
tary, have accepted my assurance that the whole of the charge 
made is false. They believe that only dead animals are disseCted 
in my laboratory. But, after the false witness and the igno- 
minious fiasco, the faCt remains that some person — certainly an 
untruthful anti-humanitarian — has told falsehoods in respeCt to 
myself, possibly with the objeCt of injuring me ; certainly with 
this result, that the opposers of scientific investigation are once 
more shown to be as unscrupulous as they are bitter. — Edward 
B. Aveling, D.Sc.” 
The conduct of Prof. E. Ray Lankester in rejecting the Chair 
of Natural History at Edinburgh, almost as soon as he had ac- 
cepted it, is the subject of much unfavourable comment. Prof. 
Huxley declares that Mr. E. Ray Lankester had been fully in- 
formed of all those conditions and arrangements which he now 
assigns as the grounds for his resignation. 
Dr. J. Crossar Ewart, heretofore Professor of Natural History 
at Aberdeen, takes the Chair at Edinburgh so unexpectedly 
vacated. 
Prof. H. Alleyne Nicholson, of St. Andrews, whose works we 
have repeatedly had the pleasure of bringing under the notice of 
our readers, succeeds Prof, Ewart at Aberdeen. 
