108 DREAMS AND DELUSIONS. 



The condition of morbid suspiciousness, and its relation on 

 the one hand, to ordinary fear, and on the other to delusion, 

 to ordinary caution, and to unnecessary self- sought danger, 

 may be sufficiently illustrated by the following account given 

 by Gillmore of the mental condition of the old wild cock 

 turkey of North America. ' His whole life seems to be spent 

 in a state of uneasiness, seeing and dreading danger in every 



breath of wind or moving object I doubt much if 



a more crafty, suspicious animal can be found in the world. 

 .... Not unfrequently this very watchfulness leads to his 

 destruction, for, to avoid an imaginary danger, he runs into 

 a real one.' Leroy gives a similar account of the hunted 

 wolf. 



That many animals have distinct ideas of danger, first 

 specialised in connection with particular forms and sources 

 thereof, and afterwards generalised in connection with peril of 

 all kinds and from all sources with danger in general ; and 

 that such ideas are even more apt to become morbid than 

 other classes of ideas, it would be absurd to deny, unless we 

 are prepared to deny their existence in man. Apart alto- 

 gether from speech and writing, which it has been repeatedly 

 shown afford very feeble and fitful aid in man, we are in both 

 cases in man and other animals and in the latter as much 

 as in the former, entitled to infer the presence of morbid 

 ideas that is of delusions from the behaviour or action of 

 the man or animal. In no other way can we intelligently 

 explain whole series of phenomena in conduct that are 

 otherwise inexplicable morbid antipathies, conspicuous 

 eccentricities, marked revulsions of feeling, suddenly com- 

 mitted crimes, suddenly developed ferocity or destructive- 

 ness. 



There is every ground for believing, moreover, that, as in 

 man, delusion may be artificially and at will created in other 

 animals by man for instance, by the use of certain narcotics 

 (Pierquin), a circumstance that is referred to more at length 

 in the chapter on ' Artificial Insanity.' 



Delusions sensory or other are as likely to occur in the 

 drunkenness of the lower animals as in the delirium tremens 

 of man, and delusions of the same kind. 



