hardly have been more significantly
exercised, yet less than forty signers were willing to accede to such
demand. Upon the files of the society are now the signatures of over
six hundred physicians in the State who have favoured legislation
restricting the practice of vivisection to competent men, and
providing against cruelty and abuse.

In the fall of 1911 the Society circulated a petition throughout the
State. It asked the Legislature of the State of New York to provide--

"an immediate and impartial investigation by a non-partisan commission
into the practice of animal experimentation as conducted in this
State. In view of the inherent possibility of cruelty in the
practice, and the obvious inadequacy of the existing laws to prevent
such cruelty, we deem the existing status of vivisection in this State
to be a menace to the community, which calls for legislative
investigation."

To this petition more than twelve thousand signatures were obtained.
Again the influence of the laboratory was effective in preventing the
Legislature from granting the investigation desired.

Some of the most scholarly editorials which have appeared in the
newspaper press in favour of inquiry have been those of Hon. St. Clair
McKelway, the Chancellor of the Board of Regents of the State of New
York and editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, the leading evening newspaper
in the United States. Referring to one of the Bills introduced by the
Society for the Prevention of Abuse in Animal Experimentation,
Dr. McKelway said:

"The Bill ought to be passed. It would secure an unpaid
representative Commission to investigate animal vivisection,
protecting it from abuses, and allowing it to be properly pursued
within safeguards of necessity and mercy.... The regulation of
vivisection is not the abolition of it, but the civilization of it.
Such of the medical profession as are a Trade Union on a large scale,
as afraid of one another as they are deaf to the voices of humanity
and to public opinion, should be forced by the State to courses that
should long ago have been volunteered by themselves. The beginning of
the end of licensed cruelty has come. The struggle may still take
time, but the time will be well spent and the result is as certain as
the triumph of every other benign movement for the Kingdom of God in
the hearts of men and in the laws of the State."

Of another bill introduced by this society, Chancellor McKelway wrote:

"The Society