§ COLONEL LOCKWOOD (Essex, Epping)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if his attention has been called to the apparent 18 discrepancies in the Inspector's Return of Experiments on Living Animals for the year 1893, wherein it is stated, in Table III., that three licence and certificate holders—namely, Messrs. Lin Boon Keug, Otto Lang, and Conrad Gerlaud, made no Return of any experiments performed by them, whereas, in Table I., the first two named are entered as having performed experiments, and, in Table II., the two last named are entered as having performed none; if he can state upon whose information and authority such statements, apparently contradictory, have been made and published; whether he contemplates renewing any licences or certificates attached thereto to any person or persons reported by the Inspector as having made no experiments under the licences and certificates during the preceding year, according to his Return for 1893, amounting to 49 licence and certificate holders; whether he is informed, either by the licence and certificate holders or by his Inspectors, of the number of animals made use of in the course of the 4,046 experiments reported by the Inspector in 1893; and if he will cause a Table to be prepared and laid before the House, showing the number and description of animals used in experiments in 1893, and also in the future?
MR. GEORGE RUSSELLAs stated in Table III. Of the Inspector's Return, no Return was received from Messrs. Lin Boon Keng, Otto Lang, and Conrad Gerlaud, nor from the late Dr. Romanes. The Inspector ascertained in the cases of Messrs. Romanes and Gerlaud, from inquiries at the laboratories where the licences were available, that they had not performed any experiments, and therefore included their names in Table II. From similar inquiries in the case of Messrs. Keng and Lang, he ascertained that they had performed experiments, and therefore included them in Table 1. The licences to persons included in Table II. are renewed from time to time, because for various reasons the licencees are unable to take up that work in one year, whereas they can in another, and some (such as Professor George Thomas Brown) hold such licences in case they may have to perform experiments with regard to the cattle disease, or for judicial purposes. The number of animals experimented upon may be taken as 19 closely corresponding to the number of experiments—namely, 4,046. The names of the kinds of animals are all reported to the Inspector, except those animals that are experimented on under Certificate C, or under a licence without a certificate, all such experiments being upon animals in a state of complete anæsthesia. The information which is to be gathered from Tables II. and III. is, I think, sufficient, and, in my opinion, there is no occasion for any further table.