DKEAMS AND DELUSIONS. 109 



As has been already mentioned, sane delusions are readily 

 producible artificially by the use of the mirror, and by other 

 forms of the substitution of pictorial or other representation 

 for reality, all as further described in one of the chapters on 

 ' Animal Errors.' 



Other forms of artificial delusion, sane or insane, are to be 

 found in man's deception of animals by turning day into night 

 or vice versa, by creating artificial light or darkness. Thus 

 the Korahs lead their Esquimaux dog-teams to believe that 

 the days are longer than they really are, so as to get a greater 

 amount of work from them in a given time on forced jour- 

 neys. Thus, too, cocks and song birds are led to believe 

 that night is day, and to act accordingly. 



And though distinct delusion is not necessarily involved, 

 it is interesting here to bear in mind the singular pheno- 

 mena of hypnotism (mesmerism, animal magnetism, electro- 

 biology or Braidism) in certain animals for instance, as the 

 result of the simple act of drawing a chalk or other line in 

 front of an attentive animal. The result in question has 

 been observed in animals so different, so far removed from 

 each other in the zoological scale, as ants and birds, in 

 animals wild as well as tame, the latter including the 

 turkey, canary, sparrow, barn-door fowls, chickens, and 

 cocks. Ants refuse to cross what is to man a merely 

 visible line drawn with a pencil or scratched with the 

 finger-nail. 



The effect produced by the simple operations of the 

 so-called mesmeriser, whatever they are, is most usually im- 

 mobility, paralysis of will, and of the power of movement, 

 resembling that which so commonly arises from the varied 

 forms of what is generally designated fascination, or the 

 suddenly aroused sense of terrible danger. In other cases 

 the effect produced is more a sort of sleep, from which the 

 animal gradually rouses itself, recovers, or awakes ; or it is 

 merely apparently dazed for a time; or the bird's eyes may 

 be fixed on the chalk line, and its head appear as if glued 

 down to a given board, floor or table. 



Morbid ideation in the lower animals, as in man, involves 

 the formation of erroneous inferences or conclusions; and, 



