The papers this week have published some sickening accounts of
the transportation of a whale on a motor lorry from Lincolnshire to the Natural History Museum in London. The whale is said to have lived three days on the lorry. "At night when it was cooler," said one of the persons in charge, "the whale used to liven up a bit." Towards the end of this ghastly Odyssey it burst a blood-vessel and died shortly before London was reached. The R.S.P.C.A. is said to be inquiring into the matter. Obviously something much better could have been arranged than the suffering of this slow death. Perhaps whales do not come into the category of animals in whose cause the R.S.P.C.A. can intervene, yet we seem to remember a case in which a man was convicted of leaving a bowl of goldfish without attention for two or three days. It is easy to think hardly of the man's carelessness, but what about the hundreds of thousands of fish which are caught every day and thrown on the decks of fishing vessels to die slowly ? Do they suffer less than the " domestic " goldfish ? The question of cruelty to animals has never been thought out coherently, and it is one which our generation ought to tackle.
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