At a. meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, held
in the Rdinkergh Royal Institution last Monday week, Professor Rutherford presented the results of a new series of those cruel and protracted experiments made on the bile-ducts of doge placed for hours not under any anseethetic, but under the paralysing influence of eurari, on which he was examined a year ago before the Royal Commission on Vivisection, and the nature of which he then detailedatlength, to the horror of the public. We suppose that this new aeries of experiments was made before the re- cent Act came into operation, and that they could not have been permitted under it as it is at present administered ; at least, that is the impression we derive from Mr. Cross's recent answer to Mr. Mundella as to the working of the Act of last year. But we mention these cruel experiments of Professor Rutherford's now only to record that Sir William Thomson, of Glasgow, who pre- sided at the meeting at which the results of these experiments were described, has written an admirable letter to the Scotsman, to express his opinion that 'experiments involving such torture to so large a number of sentient and intelligent animals are not justifiable, by either the object proposed or the results obtained or obtainable by such an investigation as that described by Professor Ruther- ford." Sir William Thomson entertains this opinion "very strongly, after many years' of serious consideration of the great question of the advisableness or justifiableness of experiments involving cruel treatment of the lower animals." We recorded this with the more pleasure, because such opinions expressed by men SO eminent as Sir William Thomson will weigh more with physio- logists than the opinions of hundreds of humanitarians. The recent Act would be a success, if it has only obstructed seriously the vivisecting career of Professor Rutherford.
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