1 882.] Hypnotism in Animals. 719 



charmer alone, they brought him to a distant heap of rubbish, 

 and causing him to lay off all his raiment that there might be no 

 deception practiced upon them, they watched his movements. 



" Approaching the pile with a serpent-like hiss and nervous 

 working of the features and limbs, which became more and more 

 excited and violent, presently serpent after serpent of the most 

 venomous kind, showed their heads and gradually moved to- 

 wards their charmer, until reaching out his hand he took them as 

 so many lifeless withes, and deposited them in his basket." Num- 

 berless attested incidents of a similar kind might be given, the 

 operator winding the serpent about his neck and pressing coil 

 after coil into his mouth, and rendering it rigid as a stick or pliant 

 as a cord at pleasure. 



In a report on the " Manners and Customs of the modern 

 Egyptians," by E. VV. Lane, 1836, is an almost identical account 

 of snake charmers of Egypt, and their method of drawing ser- 

 pents out from the houses. 



In 1646 Athanasius Kercher, an Italian monk, described what 

 he termed the " Experimentum mirabile." It was an experiment 

 which has since become sufficiently familiar to all of us, but 

 which appeared to the old monk little less than miraculous. 



He tied the feet of a hen together and laid her on the ground, 

 where after cries and violent struggling she became quiet, " as if," 

 says he, " despairing of escape through the fruitlessness of her 

 motions, she gave herself up to the will of her conqueror." 



Kircher then drew a chalk line in a diagonal direction from one 

 eye to the other, loosened the ribbon, and the hen, although left 

 perfectly free, remained immovable, even when he attempted to 

 rouse it. Kircher believed that the hen thought the chalk line 

 was a string by which it was bound as at the feet, and attributed 

 its quiet state to this idea. 



The most extended observations upon hypnotism in animals 

 have been made by Czermak in the private physiological labora- 

 ' tory of the University of Leipsic. The results obtained were 

 reported in two lectures delivered by him in January, 1873, and 

 published (in translation) in Popular Science Monthly for Sept. 

 and Nov., 1873. 



Czermak dwells upon the unreliability of untrained observation 

 in such matters, and says that the usual reports, while honest and 

 technically true from the observer's standpoint, are in their con- 

 clusions generally false. 



