VIVISECTION AT OXFORD.
. [To THE EDITOR OR THE " STECTATOR.1
So„—The Convocation of the University of Oxford has just voted £10,000 for building a laboratory, and supplying means and opportunities for Dr. Burdon Sanderson to pursue his "researches." Your readers do not require to be told what these "researches" of the well-known vivisector are.
I write now, as an old member of the University, which I once could honour, and which still I love, to ask your valuable aid in appealing to other members of that University who know what vivisection is, who know what Dr. Bunion Sanderson has professed himself to be, and who feel that the vote of last Tuesday, if it be not rescinded, or at least qualified and guarded by very stringent provisions, will commit the University to a course of action which we may lament as a misery and a deep disgrace, but which it will be hardly possible to restrain or to regulate. I am not aware whether the vote of 210,000 to carry on these cruel and useless brutalities can be appealed against or rescinded in the ordinary course of University procedure. If anything can be done by those who are on the spot to prevent altogether the execution of this iniquitous scheme, I trust it will be done ; but if it cannot be altogether prevented, it must be quite possible to enact provisions forbidding the practice of vivisection cruelties for any puTose. Dr. Burdon Sanderson pleads that vivisection will not be practised in this laboratory "for purposes of instruction," but only "for purposes of research," hence, no doubt, the number of animals required for torture would be smaller; but I have yet to learn that the cruel and deliberate t orture of a helpless and inoffensive animal is at all the less a brutal act, or at all the less a disgrace to the man who performs it, because it is done "for purposes of research," and not "for ,purposes of instruction."—I am, Sir, &c., Innellau, N.B., Ittne 7th. F. NIITCOMBE OXENIIAM.
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