Mr. Reid, the Member for Hereford, moved on Wednesday a
Bill for the total abolition of vivisection, from which he would have done well, we think, to exclude all the ordinary experiments on inoculation intended for the benefit of the animals inoculated, which the House would never consent to prohibit. Indeed, if the licences granted under the existing Act were but more stringent, specifying the number of individual creatures to be experimented on under them, and if the licences were refused,—which they have not been,—for every experiment savouring of true torture, such as Professor Rutherford's on the biliary secretion of dogs, there would have been no good ease as yet for fresh legislation. Mr. Reid, however, was able to show, in his admirable speech, that the Act of 1876 is very inadequately administered, nor did Mr. Cartwright or Dr. Playf air break down his case. Dr. Playfair's statement, often repeated, that the suc- cessful killing of mice by inoculating them with the virus of cholera, gives you fresh knowledge as to how the population of London might have been saved from cholera, is one of those wild statements on which physiologists would never rely, if they did. not give average men credit for jumping to just such conclusions as their prompters desire. Sir William Harcourt made a speech chiefly memorable as proving that he dues not under. stand at all how the Act actually works. And Mr. G. Russell, the Member for Aylesbury, made an admirable speech in favour of farther restrictions, after which the debate was interrupted by the clock, so that it comes to an end without a division for this Session,
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