we have no right to kill animals for food, while there are those who, without maintaining this extreme position, hold that we have no right to cause them pain for the purposes of our own amusement, or even for the alleviation of human suffering by means of the advancement of physiological and medical science.  It will be seen that the three questions here raised are the legitimacy of the use of animal food, of field sports, and of vivisection.  As respects the first, I do not doubt that, considering their relative places in the scale of being, man is morally justified in sacrificing the lives of the lower animals to the maintenance of his own health and vigour, let alone the probability that, if he did not, they would multiply to such an extent as to endanger his existence, and would themselves, in the aggregate, experience more suffering from the privation caused by the struggle for life than they now do by incurring violent deaths.  At the same time, though man may kill the lower animals for his own convenience, he is bound not to inflict needless suffering on them.  The torture of an animal, for no adequate purpose, is absolutely indefensible.  Cock-fights, bull-fights, and the like seem to me to admit of no more justification than the gladiatorial shows.  Are field-sports, then, in the same category?  The answer, I think, depends on three considerations:  (1) would the animal be killed any way, either for food, or as a beast of prey; (2) what is the amount of suffering inflicted on it, in addition to that which would be inflicted by killing it instantaneously; (3) for what purpose is this additional suffering inflicted.  I shall not attempt to apply these considerations in detail, but I shall simply state as my opinion that, amongst the results of a legitimate application of them, would be the conclusions that worrying a dog or a cat is altogether unjustifiable; that fox-hunting might be justified on the ground that the additional suffering caused to the fox is far more than counterbalanced by the beneficial effects, in health and enjoyment, to the hunter; that shooting, if the sportsman be skilful, is one of the most painless ways of putting a bird or a stag to death, and, therefore, requires no justification, whereas, if the sportsman be unskilful, the sufferings which he is liable to cause, through a lingering and painful death, ought to deter him from practising his art.  With regard to the much-debated question of vivisection, it seems to me utterly untenable, and eminently inconsistent on the part of those who eat animal food or indulge in field-sports, to maintain that, under no circumstances, is it morally justifiable to inflict pain on the lower animals for the purpose of ascertaining the causes or remedies of disease.  But, having once made this admission, I should insist on the necessity of guarding it by confining the power of operating on the living animal to persons duly authorised, and by limiting it to cases of research as distinct from