§ COLONEL LOCKWOOD (Essex, Epping)I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education whether his attention has been drawn to a book entitled Animal Physiology, by William S. Furneaux, Special Science Teacher, London School Board, in which experiments on the nerves of living animals are inculcated; whether this book is sanctioned by the Science and Art Department, and used in London School Boards; and whether he will examine the volume with the view of deciding whether or not it is a proper book for use in schools?
§ THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (Mr. ACLAND,) York, W.R., RotherhamThe Science and Art Department have not sanctioned this book, as they carefully avoid recommending or authorising any special textbooks. I am informed by the School Board for London that it is not, and has not been, supplied for use in the day schools or evening schools of the Board, but that it is in use at one, and one only, of the pupil teacher schools of the Board at which animal physiology is a 320 subject of instruction. I may add that the passages to which the hon. Member has drawn my attention speak of experiments on the nerves of living animals in a way which appears to me to be hardly judicious in a text-book for elementary students.