1892.] on the Physiology of Dreams. 589 



times to tlie most terrible, dream. A friend of mine who was 

 sleeping in a strange house woke one night in a state of actual 

 exhaustion from the deathly struggle of a dream, in which he thought 

 that he was overpowered by birds of prey. His dream carried hira 

 to the gardens of the dead in India ; and, what was more strange, it 

 carried him to the story of Philip Quail, — a hero of the Robinson 

 Crusoe type, — a story he had not read for many years. He thought 

 the dream must have resulted from indigestion ; but it recurred 

 night after night, and at last he began to suspect, from a kind of 

 reasoning that took place in the dream itself, that the down pillow 

 in which his head was half buried was connected with the cause. 

 He inquired into the matter, and at once discovered that the pillow 

 was stuffed with feathers undergoing decomposition and giving forth 

 a peculiar odour so soon as the warmth of his body produced 

 diffusion of the odour. The pillow changed, he was no longer 

 troubled with the dream. All the details of the mystery were also 

 unravelled. The fact of the odour was disclosed, and the story of 

 Philip Quail, from his recollection of it, supplied a similar incident, 

 in that a pillow stuffed with the decomposing feathers of wild birds 

 induced, in Philip, his dream. 



Sounds, particularly when they are suddenly brought to bear on 

 the sleeper, produce the strangest dreams In my early days of 

 professional life the sound of the night-bell, familiar as I was with it, 

 always produced a vivid, but necessarily brief, dream — for I was up 

 in a minute — that varied with the manner of the messenger who rang 

 the bell. A violent clang led once to the idea of a fall from a height, 

 with noise of thunder, as if I were falling down on an avalanche ; a 

 series of gentle ringings led me back to school days, when, at the 

 close of term, I took part with my companions in a peal on the bells 

 of the village church, and that so vividly, I seemed to have the rope 

 of the tenor bell still in my hand. 



In these objective dreams, expectation and long watching play an 

 important part ; the briefest dream may then become the intensest 

 and most real. A few seconds of sleep — nine winks, literally — will 

 come over the wearied watcher, and afford, from the effect of some 

 outer impression, a dream of long duration, with events occurring in 

 it of the most striking nature. Such dreams have deceived many a 

 sleeper, and have led him, unconscious of the transient " twinkle of 

 oblivion," to give to the world tales of manifestations made to himself 

 that have not merely sounded like miracles, but have acted like 

 miracles, in their after influence. The Hegira itself might count 

 amongst dreams of this nature. 



In these brief objective dreams it would seem as if one or more of 

 the senses may be awake whilst the others sleep. My learned and 

 finely observant friend Dr. Hack Tuke dreamt that a gentleman 

 called at his house and stood at the front door. He saw the gentle- 

 man from the window, and as no one let him in, he (the dreamer) 

 went to the top of the kitchen stairs, where there was a bell, which 



