nd universal acceptance
would sometimes seem to create impregnable barriers against change.
But with the slow lapse of years, the venerated custom is attacked by
doubt; the superstition is undermined, and the great evil gradually
passes from the sight. No great wrong is so securely entrenched, as
to be absolutely safe from the ultimate condemnation of mankind.

What is to be the future of vivisection, as conducted in America to-
day? Is it to continue, without other limitations against cruelty than
those which are self-imposed, without legal restriction or restraint,
so long as civilization endures, ever widening its scope, ever
increasing the hecatombs of its victims, until uncounted milions shall
have been sacrificed? Is protest against excess to grow weaker, until
the ideal of humaneness in the laboratory shall become a scoff and a
byword? Is approval of any research in the name of Science to become
stronger until it shall cover the vivisection of human beings as well
as the exploitation of animals? Or are we to expect, as the result of
agitation, the legal suppression of all scientific research requiring
animal life, within the limits of the next half-century? It is easier
to ask questions than to answer them. Yet, as one who for over thirty
years, has taken some part in the agitation for reform, you may be
willing to permit a forecast of probabilities, vague, it may be, as
the vision of a sailor peering through the darkness that environs the
ship,--but the best he can do.

No estimate of the future of vivisection in America can be of value
which does not recognize the power of the laboratory at the present
day. Half a century ago, the vivisection of animals was rarely
practised; to-day, in the older states, there are few institutions of
higher learning which do not possess ample facilities for animal
experimentation. Millionaires, many times over, have been induced to
devote some part of their great wealth to the foundation and support
of institutions for exsperimentation upon living things. Farms have
been established where animals destined to sacrifice, are born and
bred. It may safely be estimated that in America, to-day, there are
not less than five hundred times as many experiments every year, as
took place half a century ago.

One must recognize, too, the change which has taken place in the
attitude of a majority of the medical profession towards this reform.
During the past thirty years, thousands o