236 MY LIFE 



interested that one evening he invited two or three friends 

 who were interested in the subject, and with my best patient 

 I showed most of the phenomena. At the suggestion of one 

 of the visitors I told the boy he was a jockey, and was to get 

 on his horse and be sure to win the race. Without another 

 word from me he went through the motions of getting on 

 horseback, of riding at a gallop, and after a minute or two he 

 got excited, spoke to his horse, appeared to use his spurs, 

 shake the reins, then suddenly remain quiet, as if he had 

 passed the winning-post; and the gentleman who had sug- 

 gested the experiment declared that his whole motions, expres- 

 sions, and attitudes were those of a jockey riding a race. At 

 that time I myself had never seen a race. The importance 

 of these experiments to me was that they convince me, once 

 for all, that the antecedently incredible may nevertheless be 

 true; and, further, that the accusations of imposture by scien- 

 tific men should have no weight whatever against the detailed 

 observations and statements of other men, presumably as sane 

 and sensible as their opponents, who had witnessed and tested 

 the phenomena, as I had done myself in the case of some of 

 them. At that time lectures on this subject were frequent, 

 and during the holidays, which I generally spent in London 

 with my brother, we took every opportunity of attending these 

 lectures and witnessing as many experiments as possible. 

 Knowing by my own experience that it is quite unnecessary 

 to resort to trickery to produce the phenomena, I was relieved 

 from that haunting idea of imposture which possesses most 

 people who first see them, and which seems to blind most 

 medical and scientific men to such an extent as to render them 

 unable to investigate the subject fairly, or to arrive at any 

 trustworthy conclusions in regard to it. 



How I was introduced to Henry Walter Bates I do not 

 exactly remember, but I rather think I heard him mentioned 

 as an enthusiastic entomologist, and met him at the library. 

 I found that his specialty was beetle collecting, though he also 

 had a good set of British butterflies. Of the former I had 

 scarcely heard, but as I already knew the fascinations of plant 

 life I was quite prepared to take an interest in any other 



