454 
[August, 
Bestiarianism v. Common Sense. 
devious course for an evil purpose ? ” We reply that there 
is no satisfactory evidence of purposiveness, good or evil, in 
the movements of the Wisp. 
III. BESTIARIANISM v. COMMON SENSE* 
F all the movements and agitations — religious, moral, 
social, or political — by which society is at present 
convulsed the Anti-ViviseCtion, or, as it is better 
called, the Bestiarian crusade, must be pronounced the 
strangest. Strange it appears to be in almost every respeCt ; 
the objeCt against which it is directed is in its extent utterly 
insignificant, and to the great mass of the public even non- 
apparent. The novelist, the lawyer, the dog-fancier, &c., do 
not witness physiological experiments, do not even read 
about them, and but for the labours of busybodies would not 
even be aware of their occurrence. 
Further, most “ movements,” however much they may 
have been helped forwards by the arts of the rhetorician, 
have to some extent sound, straightforward arguments at 
their command. The Bestiarian agitation seems, to us at 
least, to have relied exclusively upon misrepresentations and 
inflammatory appeals to popular ignorance, — ignorance as 
gross often among prelates, statesmen, and peers, as among 
working men and small shopkeepers. Artfully designed 
catchwords have been coined. Just as a couple of centuries 
ago to call a woman a witch was to ensure her destruction, 
so in our day to pronounce any practice “ cruel ” is to obtain 
its unenquiring condemnation. To a foreigner these curious 
outbursts of extreme humanity in the classical home of 
pugilism, of wife-beating, and of “ sport,” — in the country 
where cock-fighting is experiencing a revival, — are strangely 
suggestive. Question-begging epithets, terms left undefined, 
* Experimental Physiology, its Benefits to Mankind. By Richard Owen, 
C.B., M.D., F.R.S., &c. London: Longmans. 
The Uselessness of Vivisection upon Animals as a Method of Scientific 
Research. By Lawson Tait, F.R.C.S. Birmingham : Herald Press. 
The Ethics of Vivisection. By Dr. S. Wilks. Contemporary Review. 
