EXTRACT FROM LETTER
THE HUMANE SLAUGHTER OF ANIMALS : Mr. Leonard Hill writes : " The Duchess of Hamilton (Spectator, August 1st) affirms that she personally timed with a stop-watch that evidence of consciousness remained for as long as seven minutes after a bullock's throat had been cut. I witnessed at the Birmingham Demonstration of Methods of Slaughter, at which I believe the Duchess of Hamilton was present, movements of a bullock which lasted some minutes after its throat had been cut, but these movements were no evidence of consciousness. The researches of Sir Charles Sherrington, the President of the Royal Society, and other distinguished physiologists have shown that co-ordinate movements are no evidence of con- sciousness, and can be carried out by the lower nervous centres when the great brain has been completely removed. For example, movements of locomotion can be carried out by the lower nervous centres. In the case of a goat it was a mediaeval mountebank trick performed at fairs to compress the carotid arteries and make the animal fall down unconscious, to jump up again when the pressure was removed. Mr. G. P. Mudge, Lecturer on Zoology at the East London College, cited by the Duchess, has attacked me for saying that the vertebral arteries in the ox supply the muscles of the head and neck rather than the brain. He admits that these arteries supply ' some of the skeletal muscles and skin of the head and part of the neck. The vertebral arteries compared to. the_carotid are very small in size ; supplying, as they do, these parts with blood there is little available for- the brain through them. I was wrong in saying that they supply muscles rather than the brain. They supply both. But the fact which is of first importance and which Mr. Mudge has suppressed is that my, experimental evidence gained from the calf sheaved that after the carotid arteries are cut the supply to the brain by the Vertebra arteries is
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