matter of the merest curiosity is made the pretext for mangling living animals in the most dreadful way that can be imagined. In France the most barbarous cutting up of living animals is pursued with a savage and reckless enthusiasm. This making of experiments includes every species of cruelty that the most savage ingenuity can invent; it includes sawing off portions of the skull, and paring away the brain in slices, to see what effect is produced by wounding one part more than another!-it includes the starving of animals to death, for the purpose of ascertaining the appearance of the stomach-it includes the tying of ligatures on the bile-duct, the thoratic-duct, the pylorus, and other parts, all which is accompanied with excruciating torture to the victim operated on-it includes the laying bare the heart, to observe the strength of its action; dividing nerves, cutting away viscera, and many other operations which are accompanied with the direst cruelty. Think of a dog being tied down to a table, the whole fleshy walls of its belly being cut away with a knife, and experiments made on it in that dreadful and pitiable state, to prove whether the stomach is active or passive in vomiting-think what must be the sufferings of a creature whose belly is ripped open, and emetics injected into its stomach, or what must be the agony produced by cutting away the stomach altogether, and sewing a bladder in its place! These and similar barbarous but really useless experiments, have been repeated over and over, with a perseverance which is perfectly disgusting. Many hundreds of dogs have been dissected alive to prove

whether the stomach is active or passive in vomiting but I would ask, when an animal is writhing in agony, struck with dismay and astonishment, with its belly ripped open and its bowels exposed to the atmosphere, are we to expect that in all the horrors of this situation, the stomach will exhibit itself, or perform its functions, just as if nothing had happened? I cannot believe it. And if ten thousand such experiments as these were made, there still will and must be want of proof; and, fortunately, this is not of one straw's consequence."

We cannot read without emotions of grief, and feeling sentiments of horror and detestation rise in our bosoms, the account of a bitch, which whilst they were dissecting alive, continually licked her young ones, as if to solace her affliction, and mitigate her torture, by this maternal gratification; and when this last consolation was denied, by taking away her young, she uttered a piercing and lamentable cry!

Hasten, O thou God of mercy, according to thy promise, that happy period, when the earth shall be purified from sin, and the unoffending creatures of thy hand, being freed from the effects of the curse, shall no more be cut, and mangled, and tortured, by the agents of Satan, for their wicked amusement; but shall enjoy all that happiness which thy infinite goodness from eternity designed them.

71

ON CRUELTY TO SHEEP.

"Th' essays of bloody feasts on brutes began,

And after forg'd the sword to murder man."-DRYDEN.

This harmless, inoffensive, and valuable animal is often the subject of excessive cruelty. Urged by an unmerciful driver, whole flocks are made to perform very long and painful journeys; and the horrid practice of cutting off their toes, to prevent their running away, (as practised by some butchers) is an act of cruelty too great for language to express ; inasmuch as that part called the quick, either in the fingers of human beings, or the toes of animals, is more tender, and when injured, more susceptible of pain, being more nervous than any other part of the body. How great then must be their sufferings when compelled to travel under such distressing circumstances! Many butchers also not only make it a common practice to skin these animals alive, because the hide is then more easily stripped off from the writhing carcass, but they often lay wagers respecting the shortness of time in which they can perform their horrid task! A butcher

living at Swinn informed me, that he knew a butcher that undertook for a wager to skin a sheep in six minutes, and that the poor creature gave a cry similar to bleating, after his hide was taken off! That when this wretch attended Stourbridge market, the younger branches of the profession began to cry, "Ba!" and so the cry ran from stall to stall, to the great mortification of this monster. Another butcher, in Birmingham, acknowledged to me that he had been guilty of the same crime, and for the same cause, and that the animal was not dead when he had finished his work.

I knew a butcher who seldom permitted his sheep to die before he began to skin them; and I have in numerous instances beheld him, from the window of my school, (he living very near it) holding his pigs with all his might in boiling hot water immediately after he had stabbed them. I also knew the end of this man; but it was an awful end! it was the end of one whom the God of mercy had evidently forsaken, and delivered over to the tormentors. How dreadful the state of such a man! When on his death bed

Guilt still alarms, and conscience ne'er asleep,

Wounds with incessant strokes," not loud, but deep ;"
While the vex'd mind, her own tormentor, plies

A scorpion scourge, unmark'd by human eyes!

Trust me, no tortures that the poets feign,
Can match th' fierce, th' unutterable pain
He feels, who night and day, devoid of rest,
Carries his own accuser in his breast.

"A butcher driving a flock of sheep, one of them having broken away from the others, the

monster drew his knife, and with shocking barbarity, cut out the poor creature's eyes, and in that condition he turned it to the rest of the flock! Upon being asked the motive which had induced him to such an act of cruelty, he replied, 'that he was accountable to no one for what he did, and that he would use his own property according to his own mind.'"

"It is a common practice with these professed murderers, in driving a flock of sheep, when any one is refractory, to break its leg." Gen. Mag. vol. 24. p. 251, 255.

"Some monsters last week cut away the two shoulders, and two legs, from a sheep, belonging to Mr. Charles Allen, Farmer, of Westville, leaving the poor animal alive!" Wolverhampton Chron. Dec. 4, 1833.

The sheep was sacrific'd on no pretence,
But meek and unresisting innocence;
A patient, useful creature, born to bear
The woolly fleece, that cloth'd her murderer;
And daily to give down the milk she bred,
A tribute for the grass on which she fed ;
Living, both food and raiment she supplies,
And is of least advantage when she dies.
What more advance can mortals make in sin

So near perfection, who with blood begin ?—Dryden.

Its beautiful offspring the lamb, an animal which to be loved only requires to be seen, is often the subject of great cruelty; for butchers have been known to lay wagers that they could skin or dress a lamb before it was dead!

The following instance of excessive cruelty, and the awful punishment which God inflicted upon its author, is a striking proof, that although