At the meeting of the International Congress for the Preven-
tion of Cruelty to Animals, on Monday, a letter was read from the Queen, which shows pretty clearly the private feelings with which she regards the practice of vivisection. Sir T. M. Biddulph wrote to Lord Harrowby (the President of the Congress),—" The Queen hears and reads with horror of the sufferings which the brute creation often undergo from the thoughtlessness of the ignorant, and she fears also, sometimes from experiments in the pursuit of science. For the removal of the former the Queen trusts much to the progress of education, and in regard to the pursuit of science, she hopes that the entire advantage of those antesthetie discoveries from which man has derived so much benefit himself in the alleviation of suffering, may be fully extended to the lower animals." Yes ; but the " entire advantage" of these anaesthetic discoveries is so very little, when the poor creatures experimented on are allowed, like Dr. Legg's cats, to pine away for days and weeks after the " entire ad- vantage " of those anmsthetics has been long exhausted. Some members of the Congress itself were almost as afraid of condemn- ing the practice of gaining benefit for men at the expense of animal torture as certain of our medical correspondents. Yet which of them would deliberately have authorised the torturing of a dog or cat for the sake of investigating the possibility of a cure for himself ? Why are we so much less afraid of selfish- ness on behalf of society at large, than we are of selfishness on behalf of our individual selves ? The resolution of the Congress against vivisection was good, as far as it went, but too gingerly.
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