NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 255 



forth, may find a headless trunk suspended neck down- 

 wards that it may bleed more freely, and the head placed 

 bill uppermost on a cold plate for the resting-place of the 

 severed neck. The snapping of the jaws of that distant 

 head, and the movements of that suspended body, have 

 startled more than one neophyte who has been taken 

 do^vn to see ' what a turtle can do when its head is cut 

 off;' especially if, as it has happened to some of my 

 friends, their fingers have chanced to come within reach 

 of the turtle's bill at the snapping moment. 



That such post-decapitation snaps and motions should 

 raise horrible ideas of comparison is hardly to be won- 

 dered at ; and I remember this instance of the vitality 

 of the turtle's head being brought forward in corrobora- 

 tion of the sickening story of the blush on Charlotte 

 Corday's face, when the brutal executioner struck it on 

 the cheek as he held up the severed head to the execra- 

 tion of the friends of the imp Marat, the idol of the 

 canaille that surrounded the guillotine. A friend wit- 

 nessed an execution in Italy by an instrument resembling 

 the Scottish maiden. He was very near the scene of 

 death, and when the criminal's head was held up, he saw 

 the eyes roll from right to left and from left to right. 

 Those best qualified to judge, are of oj^inion that this 

 and similar movements are merely convulsive, and that 

 the severed head does not feel. To say nothing of the 

 stunning shock to the nervous system, more especially if 

 the ponderous trenchant axe falls upon the occiput, as it 

 did in the case of the unfortunate Louis XVI., whose 

 under-jaw was said to have been left on the trunk, either 

 from his shrinking just before the fatal moment, or the 

 shortness of his neck ; the blood-vessels of the brain 

 must be so speedily emptied when a person suffers death 

 by the guillotine, that all sensation must vanish in a very 

 short space of time : but it is very far from clear that 

 the head does not continue to live during that short 



