We may be certain that a period will yet arrive, when among the more intelligent classes of society, doubts concerning the practical utility of all that is done in the name of Science will take the place of present-day credulity. It is too soon to expect a general spirit of inquiry to arise; the closed laboratory has not been so long in existence but that a request for more time to demonstrate possibility of accomplishment may seem not unreasonable. But some time in the future, long after we have all passed away, the intellectual world may be moved by the spirit of doubt and unrest; it will ask from the laboratory a statement of account; it will demand that the books be balanced; and that against the cost of agony and death, there be made known whatever gains in way of discoveries of clearly demonstrated value to humanity, can be proven to exist. Like the servant in the parable, the modern laboratory has been given its ten talents. It enjoys a secrecy which is profound, all that wealth can procure, and unrestricted opportunity for ever phase of research. There is no limitation to the torments which it may inflict, without impediment or fear of public criticism, if present secrecy can be maintained. The conscience of modern society--so far as vivisection is concerned,--would seem to have "journeyed into a far country." But some day it may return to its own, and ask for an accounting of its trust. And fifty years hence, if pressed for the proof of great achievement, of grand discoveries, what evidence will then be produced by the vivisection laboratory? How much of wealth will have been devoted to fruitless explorations in desert regions? What vast fortunes will have been paid out to professional explorers, whose work will have been in vain? What proofs will the laboratory then be able to adduce of "priceless discoveries" made within its walls, proofs resting not upon the heated enthusiasm of the experimenter, but demonstrated by statistical evidence of a decreased mortaility from the scourges of disease? THAT is the test of utility, which may one day be applied not merely to Mr. Rockefeller's creation, but to every laboratory in England and America. Then, perhaps, it may not suffice to set forth discoveries, as useless to mankind, as would be the demosntration of gold and silver in the moon. Before the tribunal of an intelligent public opinion,--not of our day, but of some distant epoch, the justification of secret vivisection will assuredly be demanded. Will it be given? Against the vast cost in money, cost in depravation of the instinct of compassion, cost in the lessened sensitiveness of young men and young women to the infliction of torment, cost in the seeming necessity of defending and justifying cruelty, cost in the temptation to exaggerate facts, cost in the countless hecatombs of victims, non-existent to-day, yet doomed to perish in pain of which no record and no use can be found,--against all this, what profit will be