“SIR,—Professor Horsley’s criticism on the above work—planned and compiled by my direction—demands from me a careful reply, which I shall endeavour to give as soon as may be possible at this distance from the books whence the impugned passages are derived. I shall be much surprised if the hocus pocus of the sham anæsthetic _curare_ with ineffective applications of genuine chloroform do not once more illustrate ‘the curse of vivisectible animals,’ and if the results of the experiments in question, whatever were their worth, would not, in most cases, have been vitiated had real and absolute anæsthesia been produced in the victims. Should a small number of the experiments cited in the ‘Nine Circles’ prove, however, to have been performed on animals in an entirely painless state, I shall, while withdrawing them with apologies from a forthcoming new edition of the book, take care at the same time to call attention to the multitude of other experiments, home and foreign, therein recorded—e.g., baking to death, poisoning, starving, creating all manner of diseases, inoculating in the eyes, dissecting out and irritating the exposed nerves, causing the brain of cats ‘to run like cream,’ etc., about which no room for doubt as to the unassuaged agony of the animal can possibly exist.” Miss Cobbe concludes by a sharp, but just, criticism on her critic, and with an acute diagnosis of the learned vivisectionist’s own condition:— “The tone of Dr. Horsley’s remarks against me personally will probably inspire those who know me and the history of my connexion with the anti-vivisection cause with an amused sense of the difficulty wherein the Professor must have found himself when, instead of argument in defence of vivisection, he thus turned to ‘abuse the plaintiffs’ attorney.’ For myself I gladly accept such abuse (or mere bluster) as evidence that the consciences even of eminent vivisectors are, like their victims’ nerves, imperfectly under the influence of the scientific anæsthesia, and remain still sensitive to the heart-pricking charge which I bring against them, of cowardly cruelty to defenceless creatures. “I am, Sir, yours, FRANCES POWER COBBE. Hengwrt, Dolgelly, Oct. 8th, 1892.”