262 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



The great French naturalist, Henri Fabre, confesses that as a 

 schoolboy he used to combine with other spirits like himself in 

 hypnotising the unpopular neighbour's guinea-fowl. They were 

 brought into the strange, stiff state and then laid in a row along 

 the top of a wall. By and by, of course, they came all right again, 

 just as in the case of the magician's rod-like snakes. The boys were 

 repeating the ancient experiment of making hens motionless, a 

 trick which Father Kircher described in detail long ago (1646), as 

 "experimentum mirabile de imaginatione gallina.>", for it was not 

 then out of the fashion to credit a hen with imagination ! 



Animal hypnosis is different from the common hypnotic state in 

 man, but it is an analogous phenomenon, and it can be induced in 

 a large number of widely separated types : in guinea-pigs and rabbits, 

 and even in cats, in fowls and pigeons, in snakes and lizards, in 

 frogs and fishes, in crabs and craj'fishes, and m many insects. The 

 fisher-boys play with small "partans", holding them between finger 

 and thumb, and swinging them two or three times backwards and 

 forwards in the air, the result being that the crabs pass into the 

 state of animal hypnosis. Similarly, if we stand the freshwater cray- 

 fish head downwards on the table, using the broadened-out forceps 

 for pedestal, and gently but firmly prevent the tail from flapping, 

 the animal becomes stiff and irresponsive, and remains in this 

 strange inverted position for many minutes. If the forceps are 

 properly arranged, so that the creature will be physically stable 

 when our hand is removed, very quaint attitudes become possible; 

 the crayfish may look like a leaning tower of Pisa — only upside 

 down, and with a crutch! 



Sometimes a sudden change is enough to bring about the immo- 

 bility, the stiff cramp as we may call it. Thus it is often enough to 

 transfer a brittle-star very quickly from the aquarium to a dry 

 table, to see it assume the stiff cramp state, so stiff that one can 

 lift the whole animal horizontally by the last inch of one of its 

 normally very brittle arms. 



Many years ago at a meeting of a physiological society we saw a 

 woman who became hypnotic and stood rigidly when she shut her 

 eyes. The stream of impressions entering by the eyes was needed 

 to keep the body awake, just as if the inmates of a house fell 

 asleep if people did not keep knocking at the door. So it has been 

 suggested that the sudden lifting of an animal off the ground or out 

 of the water may break the stimulating circuit that keeps the body 

 from sinking into hypnosis. Sometimes it is enough to keep the 

 animal, like the little aquatic worm Pristina, from touching anything 

 rough. Even a few grains of sand will serve to keep it going. 



This is of particular interest, because sudden changes, such as 

 dislodgments, may be of frequent occurrence in certain natural 

 conditions, such as the rough-and-tumble life of the seashore or 



