A SUMMER RAMBLE AMONG THE HEBRIDES. 125 



pieces. We see in the nobler animals mere glimpses of the 

 phenomenon, mere indications of it, doubtfully apparent 

 for at most a few minutes. The blood drawn from the hu- 

 man arm by the lancet continues to live in the cup until it 

 has cooled and begun to coagulate ; and when head and body 

 have parted company under the guillotine, both exhibit for 

 a brief space such unequivocal signs of life, that the question 

 arose in France during the horrors of the Revolution, whe- 

 ther there might not be some glimmering of consciousness at- 

 tendant at the same time on the fearfully opening and shut- 

 ting eyes and mouth of the one, and the beating heart and 

 jerking neck of the other. The lower we descend in the 

 scale of being, the more striking the instances which we re- 

 ceive of this divisibility of the vital principle. I have seen 

 the two halves of the heart of a ray pulsating for a full quar- 

 ter of an hour after they had been separated from the body 

 and from each other. The blood circulates in the hind leg 

 of a frog for many minutes after the removal of the heart, 

 which meanwhile keeps up an independent motion of its 

 own. Vitality can be so divided in the earthworm, that, as 

 demonstrated by the experiments of Spalanzani, each of the 

 severed parts carries life enough away to set it up as an in- 

 dependent animal ; while the polypus, a creature of still more 

 imperfect organization, and with the vivacious principle more 

 equally diffused over it, may be multiplied by its pieces nearly 

 as readily as a gooseberry bush by its slips. It was suffi- 

 ciently curious, however, to see, in the case of this brown 

 lizard, the least vital half of the creature so much more vi- 

 vacious, apparently, than the half which contained the heart 

 and brain. It is not improbable, however, that the presence 

 of these organs had only the effect of rendering the upper 

 portion which contained them more capable of being thrown 

 into a state of insensibility. A blow dealt one of the verte- 

 brata of the head at once renders it insensible. It is after 



