Suicide or Hypnosis? 



Cloudy Buprestis submits to my manoeuvres 

 for a long period, whereas the Glittering 

 Buprestis, a pigmy again, obstinately refuses 

 to do so. 



We will leave on one side, as insufficiently 

 investigated, the influence of the bodily mass 

 and remember only this fact, that it is pos- 

 sible, by a very simple artifice, to reduce a 

 bird to a condition of apparent death. Do 

 my Goose, my Turkey and the others resort 

 to trickery with the object of deceiving their 

 tormentor? It is certain that none of them 

 thinks of shamming dead; they are actually 

 immersed in a deep torpor; in a word, they 

 are hypnotized. 



These facts have long been known; they 

 are perhaps the first in date in the science of 

 hypnosis or artificial sleep. How did we, 

 the little Rodez schoolboys, learn the secret 

 of the Turkey's slumber? It was certainly 

 not in our books. Coming from no one 

 knows where, indestructible as everything 

 that enters into children's games, it was 

 handed down, from time immemorial, from 

 one initiate to another. 



Things are just the same to-day in my vil- 

 lage of Serignan, where there are numbers 

 of youthful adepts in the art of putting poul- 

 try to sleep. Science often has very humble 

 397 



