CHRISTMAS CRUELTY.
(TO THE EDITOR Or THE BrECTATOR:1 SER,—Wrong in one or two respects, your correspondent Dlyn," is quite right in assuming that I have had mi. " practical experience" in the killing of turkeys ; for I have neither " slit their tongues," nor even "cut oil their heads," the method of killing I suggested. This is where he is right and before pointing out where he is wrong, I must confess my own errors, and say that I ought to have had more accurate• information before rushing into print; but time, too, was rushing, on, and. I fancied the delay of a day even in sending my letter to the Spectator might mean the delay of a week in its appear- ance there,—just the very week so fatal to the poor birds whose cause I was anxious to plead. But I was not so far wrong in my statement as your correspondent would make me out to. be, and certainly had not drawn upon my "imagination for my facts ! As I have just sent to a poulterer for information upon the subject—I suppose he may be con- sidered an authority—I will give verbatim the answer I received as to how turkeys were put to death. " You tie their wings, cut a vein in their tongues," then hang them up and let them bleed to death. To the question of: how long they lived, the answer was, "Only about ten minutes." So my mistake was not as to the method of killing, but as to the length of time the poor things lived with the "slit in their tongues ;" and I am indeed glad I was wrong in measuring that time by "hours," instead of minutes.
I do not for a moment tax your correspondent with having "imagined" the very different method of killing he describes "other places, other manners," and other modes of death. Where. he is wrong is in saying that the suggestion I thought merci- ful would, if acted upon," only furnish another instance of the suffering that is brought about through ignorance," his only ground for the assertion being that he has seen "a headless fowl stagger about for some seconds." Again, I cannot speak from "practical experience," but does your correspondent seri- ously believe that a "headless" anything can be conscious of sensation of any kind ?
So I repeat that turkeys are put to a cruel, and a wanteau cruel, death, if merely that they may not be ReIit " headless " tcs the table they are strung up and left to bleed to death from a lacerated tongue. It may, perhaps, be "only for about ten minutes ;" but ten minutes, under the circumstances, must seem
to them terribly like " hours."—I am, Sir, &c., S.
[The staggering about of a headless fowl certainly does not involve sensation of any kind. It is due to what ia called- " reflex action," a sort of motion which constantly happens in the living, without either sensation or consciousness. Tickle a paralysed man's feet, and he will draw them up convulsively, but be quite unaware that he has done so, and, a fortiori, of the cause of his doing so.—En. Spectator.]
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