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109

New York. Aug. 7th. 1866

Prof. Louis Agassiz.

My dear Sir.

A society has been recently formed in this State for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Its Corporators and Officers are among the first gentlemen of our city, and it has entered upon its career under the most flattering auspices, encouraged by the almost unanemous approval of the press and the public. [illegible], during its brief existence, it has affected a number of reforms, and in the wide and [successful?] writing its humane labours, it hopes to accomplish many more.

I send you herewith, an article from a late issue of the Tribune, giving quite a full account of the objects of this Society, of what it has done, and proposes to do.

My special object, however, in writing, is to ask you, on behalf of the Society to lecture before it at some time during the coming fall, on the "Turtle", with particular reference to its powers of Sensation.

Believing that the Turtle, low, as it is, in the scale of animated creatures, is, nevertheless, not beneath the attention of a Society which professes for its object the suppression of cruelty to all animals, some few weeks ago I had arrested the Captain of a vessel laden with Turtles from the Florida Coast, for inflicting cruelty upon them. The Turtles were lying on their backs, kept