MAURY OX SLEEP AND DEEAMS. 370 



impairs more or less the functions of the brain, and 

 with them all the vital powers. This observation is as 

 old as the days of Hippocrates and Aretastis, who 

 severally and strongly comment upon it. The sleep of 

 infancy, however, and that of old age, do not come 

 under this category of excess. These are natural con- 

 ditions, appertaining to the respective periods of life, 

 and to be dealt with as such. In illness, moreover, all 

 ordinary rule and measure of sleep must be put aside. 

 Distinguishing it from Coma, there are very few cases 

 in which it is not an unequivocal good ; and even in 

 the comatose state, the brain, we believe, gains more 

 from repose than from any artificial attempts to rouse 

 it into action. 



There is another point to which we must here advert, 

 in connexion with sleep as a function of repair. This is 

 the fact familiarly known, that the portion of life so 

 destined is not limited to man alone, but goes far 

 down in the scale of animal creation possibly, or pro- 

 bably, in one form or other, to the lowest grade and 

 condition in animal life. The sleep even of plants has 

 become a phrase, not merely of poetic fancy, but of 

 scientific appropriation. The curious facts regarding 

 the hybernation of certain animals, though they have 

 kindred with the phenomena and even theory of ordi- 

 nary sleep, yet present anomalies which associate them 

 in some way with the vegetable world. But the cir- 

 cumstance of greatest interest in this matter is the 

 capacity for dreaming, so clearly and curiously attested 

 in those animals which come nearest to man in the scale 

 of being. How far that condition which can rightly be 



