that may not be equally well learned from the dead body. If life and death are the same thing in the minds of these gentlemen, there can indeed be little use in attempting any argument with them. Equally absurd is the idea evidently in the minds of many of the speakers, that we should wait for the accidents that are always occurring to the human frame to elucidate the many problems that yet remain to be solved in physiology. We are afraid if we waited for the exact accident required to suit the exact case demanding a solution, that the science of life would make but tardy progress.

In answer to the assertion that no good has ever come of vivisection, it will be sufficient to say that it was the knowledge thereby gained by John Hunter that made him the profound surgeon and physiologist he was. Had he been influenced by the squeamish doctrine set forth by this society, the great reforms in the art of surgery which date from the time of his teaching and writing would not yet, in all probability, have been accomplished. The vast service he performed for humanity in discovering the means of obliterating aneurisms in the human frame would alone be sufficient to confute those who deny the value of vivisection; and in our opinion the destruction. of a whole hecatomb of dogs would not weigh in the balance against the value of that great discovery.

But it is in the study of the nervous system that the use of vivisection has been so clearly shown. It may be said without the slightest hesitation that we should have been as ignorant of the true mode of action of

that system as were the ancients, had it not been for the labours of Bell and Marshall Hall, both of whom gained all the knowledge with which they have lit up that hitherto dark subject out of the bodies of living animals.

Dr. Marshall Hall used to say that the frog was "God's gift to the physiologist," and there can be no doubt that unless the highly-organized nervous system of the frog had been made subservient to the uses of man by these philosophers, Medicine would have altogether lacked the mighty impulse they have given to its teaching.

Dr. Brown-Séquard again is worthily following in their footsteps, and by the legitimate use of animal life is clearing up the difficulties they have left unravelled. To deny the rabbit, or the frog, or the dog, to such men as these, would be equivalent to denying the violin to a Paganini, or the brush to a Maclise, or the pen to a Carlyle; it is the tool with which they work, and without which their subtle intellect would

have been given to them in vain. To confound labours such as theirs with the snug conceit of the paid lecturer, who bids a gaping crowd watch the agonies of an expiring mouse under the exhausted receiver of an air-pump, is, in our opinion, simple impertinence. There is the cruel process of crimping cod and salmon

"that is vivisection," cried Dr. Tunstall, of Bath. Just so, and a very cruel process it is, and we think the benevolent Doctor would be quite justified in getting up an "Anti-Crimping-Salmon Society;" nay, he would be equally justified in directing the energies

of sympathizing friends against the skinning of eels; but, in the name of common sense, we must protest against the lumping of acts such as these with the scientific and definite interrogations put to Nature by trained philosophers-by means of vivisection.

Surely the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has not so far exhausted all the fields of labour open to it as to justify its making this senseless crusade against the means of furthering the aims of science.

To rush to the rescue of a frog lying senseless and painless in the hands of a physiologist, whilst we shut our eyes to the rush of man and horse and dog after the poor hare or fox, is certainly to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. We would put it to these worthy humanitarians, whether it would not be better for them to adjourn their onslaught on scientific men until they have rescued poor puss from the helterskelter rush that is made upon him by the country gentlemen for no more noble aim than mere amusement?

Looking at the matter from our own point of view, of course, we do not mean to condemn this pastime, which subserves to the health of those who enjoy it; but from the extreme point of view taken up by this Society, the pastime of hunting must be cruel in the

extreme.

Here then is a fair field for the labours of the Society. Let it strive to put down the pastime of the country gentlemen; then it will be time enough to interfere with the scientific labours of our philosophers.

THE ENGLISH IN PARIS.

A GENTLEMAN, under the signature of "G. U.," wrote last season to the Times, complaining in the most indignant terms of the slovenly manner in which our countrymen and countrywomen dress immediately they put the straits between them and home. He sees and, according to his own account, shirks his best friends because they appear in the streets of Paris in the costumes of cab-drivers. The ladies are offenders of a deeper dye; they mount battered round hats, and save up their old dresses for the sake of appearing perfect drabs in the polite city of Paris.

Our proud G. U., who we should surmise to be one of those resident Britons who have become more French than the Parisians, is deeply hurt at our bad habits, and is evidently very much ashamed of his touring fellow-countrymen, and dreadfully afraid of what the satirical Parisians will think of them.

Having myself returned from a month's holiday on the Continent, a week of which was spent in Paris, I was not a little astonished at the frightful pelting which I, in common with the rabble rout of Englishmen, have received at the hands of G. U. Having a