The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles 



beginnings. There is nothing to tell us that 

 the mischief of a pack of idle urchins is not 

 the starting-point of our knowledge of hyp- 

 nosis. 



I have just been practising on insects tricks 

 which to all appearances are as puerile as 

 those which we practised on the Turkeys in 

 the days when the farmer's wife used to run 

 after us cracking her whip. Do not laugh: 

 a serious problem looms behind this artless- 

 ness. 



My insects' condition bears a strange re- 

 semblance to that of my poultry. Both pre- 

 sent the image of death, inertia, the contrac- 

 tion of convulsed limbs. In both again the 

 immobility is dispelled before its time by 

 the agency of a stimulus, by sound in the case 

 of the bird, by light in that of the insect. 

 Silence, darkness and tranquillity prolong it. 

 Its duration varies greatly in different spe- 

 cies and appears to increase with corpulence. 



Among ourselves, who are very unequal 

 subjects for induced sleep, the hypnotist is 

 obliged to pick and choose. He succeeds 

 with one and not with another. Similarly, 

 among the insects, a selection is necessary, 

 for they do not all of them, by a long way, 

 respond to the experimenter's attempts. My 

 best subjects have been the Giant Scarites and 

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