THE FAERY YEAR 



and lambs cannot for a time recognize each other, 

 and there is confusion in the flock. So the griev- 

 ing mother, if suspicious at first, will presently be 

 consoled, and take to the foster-child. With a lamb 

 that has lost its mother a shepherd is driven to force 

 instead of device, tying up a ewe beside the lamb 

 until she takes it for her own. 



Trance of Man and Butterfly 



The butterfly is soon to awake ; its winter 

 trance, deep almost as its sleep before birth, is 

 closely allied with those states of prolonged torpor 

 into which various animals, including man, are often 

 plunged. A close study of these strange sleeps of 

 insect, reptile, and quadruped has yet to be made. 

 It might result in good discoveries for human life. 

 Dr. Braid, one of the first to reason on these states, 

 held that Indian fakeers could throw themselves into 

 a torpor or trance resembling the winter sleep of the 

 brimstone butterfly or the dry-weather sleep of the 

 snail ; but he dared not believe in a trance lasting 

 over six weeks. Sir Charles Wade and Prince 

 Runjet Singh were at Lahore in 1837, when a 

 fakeer, said to have been buried alive six weeks 

 before, was exhumed. Wade and the prince may 

 have been tricked in some amazingly clever way, 

 but this is what they saw at closest quarters. The 

 fakeer was exhumed, and taken out of a mildewed 

 sack. He appeared lifeless a stifF, shrivelling 

 34 



