1882.] 
Experimentation in Biology » 57 1 
the dog to fear a cat, and the latter animal, after similar 
treatment, to be frightened to chase mice. The late Dr. 
Lauder Lindsay, in his “ Mind in the Lower Animals in 
Health and Disease,” and Dr. George J. Romanes, in his 
descriptive hand-book to a forthcoming treatise on Mental 
Evolution, quote Dr. Biddie’s observation of a scorpion 
poisoning itself by means of its own sting. 
Each of the last-mentioned cases independently suggests 
another, which leads us back to Physiology by as steady 
transition as when we left it. This account, too, is from 
this “ Journal ” (Dec., 1881), and is capable of condensa- 
tion into four brief statements. The bite of enraged human 
beings may, like cobras, have fatal effects : in cobra-poison 
Dr. Gautier found an alkaloid possessing the properties of 
the ptomaines, which instantly convert potassium ferri- 
cyanide into potassium ferrocyanide, and which, when intro- 
duced into the system, occasion alarming symptoms, dilata- 
tion of the pupils, and death ! the re-dissolved residue of 
evaporated saliva reduces the potassium ferricyanide, and, 
when injected under the skin of a bird, causes dilatation of 
the pupils, stupor, and death. Dr. Gautier finds the pto- 
maines are formed solely from the albumenoid portions of 
the dead body, though they occur in the normal excretions 
of man and of other animals, and in small quantities in our 
tissues. 
And now, ye Sociologists, picture to yourselves the uni- 
versal abolition of experimentation on the eve of the com- 
mencement of an exhaustive investigation of the genital 
system of the higher Mammalia. An impression prevails 
there is not that unanimity desirable respedting chastity. 
The exaggerations and habit-regulations of mendacious 
quacks and ill-informed clerics, of how little avail ! appeals 
to Scripture when the very words which bind are rumoured 
capable of a biblical interpretation rendering them no guide ; 
appeals to aestheticism, when it even seems questionable 
whether the dilution of sensuality vitiates or vivifies ; ap- 
peals to a society that declines to recognise the policy of 
honesty essential to the attainment of its own equilibrium, 
compel each alike to insist upon a thorough investigation at 
the hands of Physiology. 
And now we come to the Loving Cup— “Experimental 
Neurology ; hither repair the psychologist and the physiolo- 
gist, the morphologist and the embryologist, the phrenologist 
and the metaphysician, the practitioner and the zoophilist. 
It is the subject of instruction to intelligent audiences for 
an evening’s hour; its annals narrate scenes adapted to 
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