Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1905-08-25
DO ANIMALS SUFFER-?
Some Interesting Experiments and Demonstrations
Which Point to Negative Reply.

at all had happened, not even OIL.
siisht vince to show he was In pain =
And one animal. after his lower -.
hau Deen carried away by Gamma
Dali. walked on as IL nothing bad ~.
pened. and carried its load to thu -.
| OF the day" "o
There Is really no test OF any creat,,...
feelings upon the whole so good as "a.
II will endure for the sake OF ge,,tn.
meal. An old reindeer for examine -
his forefoot broken by a gunshot. ana y.
ing too fat to follow its companions ~.
| soft ground looked about him 4 H,,,.
and then. seeing nothing. actually beya,
| TO Craze on his three remaining leps =.
III nothing had happened of sufficient oo,
sequence to keep him from his dinner"
But the most striking case known IN r..
is this: "A post horse came down On N.
road with such violence that the skin 49,
sincws of both the fore fetlock iotn,a
were so cut that on his getting up again
the bones came through the skin, and IN.
two feet turned up at the back OF the
| legs. the horse walking upon the ends m
| its leg bones. The horse was out into
field close by. and the next morning /,
| was found quietly feeding about the field
| with the forefeet and skin forced sor,.
distance up the leg bones, and, where /,
had been walking about the holes mads
in the ground by the leg bones were thr.s
or four inches deep" Animals which do
these things in cold blood can hardly
know what pain is in any human sense.
The fact is that with our belief IN eyolu.
ton, the rights of animals. our Iittl.
brothers of the air. and the rest, We ar.
in danger of forgetting that between our
selves and the lower animals there. il
after all. a great gulf fixed. Whatever
may have bridged that gulf once. the gulf
is there now, and we only make ourselves
ridiculous when we refuse to see il.
Doubtless as civilized men 1t is our bust.
ness, along with other duties to diminish
so far as we can the amount of pain in
the world. That nature has been
less cruel than we sometimes fear. il
the last reason for our being more cruel
than we need. Yet, at the same time we
ought to cultivate some sense of propor-
ton and not make more fuss over guinea
pig Jabbed in the leg with an injecting
needle than over 9 brakeman mashed be-
tween freight cars or watercured mig
ger" Our idiotic Fourth Of July probably
causes more real misery than all the
''vlvisection" in Christendom.
The Puritans have been reproached
with stopping bull batting not because It
gave pain to the bull but because it gave
pleasure to the spectators. This was lust
where the Puritans showed their custom
airy insight. The dogs probably liked the
sport. 1t is by no means clear that it
hurt the bull, and no very important mat.
ter If ii did. The vice of all these things
is that they cultivate impulses which ara
sooner or later to be gratified at the ex-
pense of human beings. about whose feel
ings there can be no question Doubtless
we do well to stop transfers from NAL
treating their horses; not. however for
the horses sake so much as our own II
is not pleasant sight to see any Great
ure in distress, and the man who begins
by beating his herse, which he hurt less
than he thinks, may end by beating his
wife, whom he will hurt more than he
knows.
The evil of all our sympathetic i'm
pulses is that they are pretty certain to
distort our moral perspective. The
- SiAAS' AhOiCg. anu, lear,
sympathy at the disposal of any one. OF
us is strictly limited. If we spend il on
one object some other must go short
They had a law in England-I do not
know whether they have it still which
made it an offence punishable by fine to
wrap a frog in n wet towel and stretch
out the web of its toes on the stage OF a
microscope to demonstrate the circulation
of the blood, the frog all the time being
about half as uncomfortable as a child on
a hard chair. But to get this law passed
and enforced cost somebody a good deal
of trouble which might better have been
bestowed elsewhere. A law nearly as
foolish has lately been presented to our
own general court. In the mean time il
is practically impossible to secure ade-
quate legislation for the protection of
persons in dangerous trades, who for lack
of it are killed and MANNED every year by
thousands. The effort which might have
helped to save men and women and chill.
dren IS drained off to frogs and guinea
pigs.