estate-and there are hundreds of them-ought to be sold to the tenants. As in the congested districts, I would apply the principle of compulsion here. It is no wrong to the landlord. It would be a boon to the tenant. It would sweeten the life of the whole country. Then there is

THE REMAINDER OF THE COUNTRY,

where the people have fair rents on good land, and are fairly prosperous. What ought to be done here? In one sense the position of these tenants is not urgent; in another it is. At first sight it might be thought safe to leave them to the ordinary conditions of the Ashbourne Act, or whatever measure takes its place. That is to say, where the landlord is willing to sell, and the tenant agrees to buy, the facilities for the transfer should be at hand. I expect this is where they must be left at present. But I desire to point out that it will be found impossible to maintain this position long. Every estate that is sold makes the position more untenable. In my own constituency a large estate has quite recently passed from owner to occupiers. The transaction has meant a reduction of six shillings in the pound on the judicial rent, and a terminable annuity takes the place of an annual rent. The result is that every tenant in South Tyrone is discontented, and compulsory sale is mentioned in every market, fair, or gathering. The larger the transfer and the greater the benefit, the more will this feeling spread. I am not pleading for compulsion; I am stating the facts. It is the old question of the leaseholder over again. He was excluded from the Act of 1881; but, when the judicial rents were fixed all round about him, the exemption had to be removed. It will, I believe, be impossible to maintain that the tenants on the badly-managed estates should get an advantage denied to those who live on properties whose owners have not been ruined. It will be impossible, ultimately, to say that the dishonest tenant in the South, whose conduct has made his landlord glad to sell, shall have a boon denied to the honest man who has paid his rent, and whose landlord has not any motive to part with his property. At present, I say, it may be necessary to leave compulsion alone in such cases. It will have to be applied in the end, whenever that may be.

The land programme I have sketched here involves not only a great effort on the part of statesmen and of Parliament; it will necessitate an entire reconstruction of the Irish Land Commission, and of the Ashbourne Act. If this work is to be done, the machine will require to move faster than it has done. Not that a great deal has not been accomplished. An area much larger than the county of Monaghan has passed from owner to occupier under the Ashbourne Act. Financially it has proved safe. punctually made and without pressure.

The payments have been The arrears are trifling. It

has been equally successful viewed from the political standpoint. Wherever an estate has changed hands under the Act there peace has been established. This is true even of the most turbulent districts. It is true alike of small and large holdings. Lower Beltoney, in far-off Gweedore, is a garden under the Purchase Act, whilst Keeldrum, on the other side of the road, and under the Plan of Campaign, is a howling wilderness. The barony of Farney, in Co. Monaghan, once the most blood-stained spot in Ireland, has, with the sale of the Marquis of Bath's property, become a model district. And everywhere else it is the same. But, as I have said, the operation must be quickened. Of course the British taxpayer has to be considered. There are politicians willing to give Ireland anything but money. It is a new departure in politics, but it has to be counted with. Money fortunately is not needed from the British taxpayer. But having placed the Irish landlord where he is the British taxpayer has every right to assist in seeing him safe out of an impossible position.

The system that has succeeded elsewhere may well be applied to Ireland. A land bank with an imperial guarantee behind local security, the former being limited and protected, is capable of doing all that is necessary. The work cannot be done in a day nor in a year. It will be a slow process. But a successful beginning having been already made, I do not see why the work should not be pressed forward. There are no doubt lions in the path. Mr. Gladstone and his friends will think of the British taxpayer. Mr. Parnell will consider the interests of his party. They will resist any such proposals as a matter of course. But it is through some such policy peace and contentment in Ireland are to be reached. Why should the Unionist party not boldly face the problem? To solve it, would bring them ever lasting renown, and add new strength to the Empire.

T. W. RUSSELL.

THE COMPARATIVE INSENSIBILITY OF ANIMALS TO PAIN.

THE careful observer of nature must often be struck by the apparently enormous amount of pain and suffering inflicted on the lower animals by each other and by man. The bird tears to pieces the worm, the fly, or the snail, and is itself torn in pieces by the hawk, the cat, or the weasel, while these in turn fall victims to the gun or trap of the sportsman. So it is with insects, and so with fish.

It is a great natural law among the lower animals for the weaker to fall a victim to the stronger, and to meet with a violent and seemingly painful end.

The object of the present article is to show that there is very strong reason for believing that the lower animals are far less sensitive to pain than is generally supposed. It would seem that a large section of the public believe that the worm and the slug, the fly and the beetle are quite as sensitive to pain as man; indeed an article appeared in the Spectator a few weeks ago, on the 'Pitilessness of Angling,' in which the writer affirmed that he could not see how the aphorism that the lowliest insect 'feels a pang as great as when a giant dies' could ever be disproved.

The suggestion that animals are less sensitive to pain than man is generally regarded as a weak apology for cruelty, but when we remember how little able, in comparison with man, they are to defend themselves from their numerous foes, and how many countless myriads daily meet with a violent death, such a suggestion should surely be hailed with pleasure, and every piece of evidence in its favour carefully weighed.

All that we know about pain must be derived from human experience. It is by comparing notes with each other that we have formed a standard as it were of human sensitiveness, and that we have decided that certain parts of the body are more sensitive than other parts to the various causes of pain. Our investigations have taught us that the source of pain is the brain, and that if the connection of any part of the body be cut off from the brain, that part becomes destitute of feeling. It occasionally happens that one of the main nerves to the hand or foot is cut through by accident, in

which case the portion of the hand or foot supplied by the nerve immediately loses all feeling. Or, again, it happens that in severe accidents the spinal cord becomes so badly crushed as to prevent all impressions below the seat of the injury being conducted to the brain, and as a result the parts of the body supplied by nerves coming off from the spinal cord below the injury at once become insensitive. Now as the general type of the nervous system is the same in all the vertebrate animals, and as we can prove that many of the functions of the brain in the lower animals are similar to our own, we have every reason to believe that the brain is the source of pain in their case just as it is with us.

It is further certain that the sensation of pain originates in one definite part of the brain, and no amount of stimulation of other parts can give rise to it. Many painless operations are recorded in the pre-chloroform days for severe fractures of the skull attended by protrusion of brain tissue, and necessitating the removal of such tissue at the hands of the surgeon. And again, it is a common experience to find tumours and abscesses developing in certain parts of the brain with an entire absence of pain, while in other parts the growth of such tumours gives rise to a good deal of suffering. It would appear that, as far as man is concerned, the more highly developed, the more active, the more wide-awake the brain is, the more sensitive does it become, and if this be true of man, why not of the lower animals also?

In dealing with man we may roughly divide him into two main types-the nervous and the muscular. The nervous type would be represented by the man with an active piercing eye, a face whose features exhibit all the characteristics of energy, intensity of thought and feeling, a narrow chest, and badly developed muscles. In the muscular type we should find the man with features exhibiting a constant expression of repose, with powerful and well-developed limbs, and slow of speech and movement.

Good examples of the one type might be found among our scholars and students, of the other type among our agricultural labourers. These are extreme cases; in some of us the muscular element predominates, in others the nervous. But the important point is, that these types are not equally sensitive to pain. Any medical man, relying on his own experience, would say that, as a general rule, the nervous type was far more sensitive than the muscular.

Numerous examples have occurred in the writer's own experience all pointing in the same direction; indeed, he has known men of the muscular type undergo the most painful operations, who have at the time exhibited no indications of suffering, and have on being questioned by him acknowledged that they did not feel much.

But the evidence is even stronger in the case of uncivilised

races, the observations of all travellers pointing to the extreme insensibility to pain exhibited by savages. A good example was given in the Spectator a few months ago, when a correspondeat related the fact that on the introduction of boots into New Zealand the vanity of the natives was so great, that when one of them was happy enough to become the possessor of a pair, and found that they were too small, he would not hesitate to chop off a toe or two, stanch the bleeding by covering the stump with a little hemp, and then force the feet into the boots.

Other facts connected with diseases of the brain may be cited in support of this suggestion, that the more active and wide-awake the brain is, the more sensitive to pain does it become. In early inflammation of the brain, when the amount of blood circulating through it is larger than usual, it becomes extremely sensitive, so much so that a bright light or a loud sound gives rise to actual pain, while at a later stage, when the circulation is much diminished, all these symptoms disappear, and the patient becomes less sensitive than when in health.

Again, M. Auzouy of Maréville, in an article in the Annales Médico-Psychologiques, vol. xxxv., states that in his asylum he found more than fifty per cent. of his idiot, imbecile, and melancholic patients presented different degrees of insensibility. The fact that in patients suffering from melancholia the sensitiveness to pain often becomes blunted is important, as melancholia is so frequently attended by great loss of mental activity and great depression of the cerebral circulation. The loss of sensitiveness will account in great measure for the horrible mutilations melancholics not unfrequently inflict upon themselves.

Although the general type of the nervous system is the same in all the vertebrate animals, it is well to remember that in all the lower animals the brain is, in proportion to the rest of the body, very much smaller than in the case of man. It appears, too, that those animals whose brains are most developed and most exercised by their constant intercourse with man, as the dog and the horse, are more sensitive to pain than wilder and less domesticated animals. In dealing with animals it is necessary to consider carefully what signs may be depended upon as proofs of their suffering. Certainly their struggles and cries are not always true indications. All wild animals struggle under restraint. With many, cries indicate fear rather than pain. A hare when shot rarely cries; when closely pursued by dogs it often does. Animals when trapped rarely cry until some one approaches the trap. Frogs will cry out loudly on the appearance of anything at all resembling a snake; when injured with stones or cut by the scythe in mowing they rarely do so. We may perhaps best judge as to what extent animals suffer by observing to what degree injuries interfere with their usual habits. I have already said that