SIDE-SADDLE FLOWERS. 89 



they make more active and frantic efforts, but, very 

 quickly, stupor seems to overtake them, and they 

 then turn upon their sides either dead (as I at 

 first supposed) or in profound anaesthesia. 



" I had no doubt, from the complete cessation of all 

 motion, and from their soaked and saturated con- 

 dition, that they were dead, and, like dead men they 

 were ' laid out,' from time to time, as they succumbed 

 to the powerful liquor ; but to my great surprise, after 

 a longer or shorter interval — from a half-hour to an 

 hour or more — they indicated signs of returning life 

 by slight motions of the legs and wings, or body. 

 Their recover}- was very gradual, and eventually, 

 when they crawled away, they seemed badly crippled 

 and worsted by their truly Circean bath. After 

 contact with the secretion, the flies which were first 

 thrown in became still, seemingly dead, in about half 

 a minute, but whether from exposure to the air, or 

 exhausted by action on these insects, the liquor did 

 not seem to be so intoxicating with those last ex- 

 posed to its influence. Anaesthesia or intoxication 

 certainly did not occur so quickly ; it took from three 

 to five minutes generally, and in one rebellious 

 subject it took at least ten minutes for him to receive 

 his coup-de-grace. A cockroach thrown in succumbed 

 almost immediately, as did also a small moth, and 

 much more slowly a common house-spider. On the 

 recover}- of the latter it was almost painful to witness 



