ON SYMPATHY AND FASCINATION. 



233 



and requires to be handled with the greatest dexterity ; nor do I know of any 

 philosophical work to which we can turn as a proper beacon to direct us in 

 our pursuit, and to determine where the boundary of sober judgment ceases, 

 and that of imagination begins. 



Some of the instances I shall refer to may, perhaps, be denominated in- 

 stinctive influences. I have no objection to the term; but the facts will 

 remain as singular, and as little accounted for, as if no such term were in 

 existence. 



Am(»ng quadrupeds, and, so far as we know of them, among amphibials, 

 fishes, and insects, there exists but little attachment of the male to the female 

 during the time of parturition, or to his own young after the female has 

 brought them forth. The seal-tribes, and especially those of the trichecus 

 Manatus, or lamantin, from which we have probably derived all the idle stories 

 of mermen and mermaids, together with a few others, may, perhaps, be 

 offered as an exception ; for these, and especially the lamantin, form unions 

 of single male with single female that continue through life, and live in dis- 

 tinct families with their offspring, till the last, acquiring maturity, leave their 

 paternal home, and found similar families for themselves. Such, then, being 

 the general fact with regard to other animals, wh^ce comes it to pass that 

 the males among the bird-tribes should evince, with a few exceptions, an attach- 

 ment that is so rarely to be met with elsewhere 1 What is that wonderful power 

 that rivets the greater number of male birds to female birds during the time of 

 nestling and incubation ; that impels them to take an equal part in construct- 

 ing the nest, and stimulates them with feelings unknown at any other season ] 

 Whence is it that several of them, as the male raven (corvus Corax), divide 

 the toil and time of sitting, and incubate the eggs by day as the female does 

 by night ] or, that others of them, leaving to their respective females the 

 entire process of incubation, sooth them through the whole of this tedious 

 period, often extending to not less than six or eight weeks, with their melo- 

 dies from a neighbouring bush, and supply them with food with the utmost 

 tenderness and punctuality? 



Whence is it, more especially amid birds that feed their young with a viscid 

 chyle or milk, secreted at that peculiar period in the crop or craw, that the 

 crop of the male becomes enlarged and changed in its action, in the very 

 same manner as that of the female, so as to enable him to divide the tender 

 office of nursing, and to supply the young with an equal quantity of nutri- 

 ment ? In the body of the mother we can, perhaps, trace a series of actions 

 which, if they do not give us a full insight into the cause of such a change, 

 and such an additional function, at least prepare us to contemplate it with less 

 astonishment ; it is a change, in a very considerable degree, analogous to 

 what occurs in the female frame of most other kinds and classes when simi- 

 larly situated; and which is evinced in its highest and most beautiful perfec- 

 tion in our own race. But in the production of a similar change in the crop 

 of the male pigeon, we meet with a fact altogether anomalous and alone : 

 there is no connexion of organ with organ; no perceptible chain of actions 

 that can have given rise to it : the frames of the individuals are distinct. It 

 is a pure sympathy excited in one being by a peculiar change produced in the 

 organization of another, and leading to a similar change in the being that is 

 thus most wonderfully and inexplicably operated upon. 



Let us pass from the bird-tribes to fishes. There are various animals of 

 this class that, on being touched, or even approached without being touched, 

 are enabled to exhaust the irritable or sensorial power, or both together, of 

 the hand or other limb that approaches them, so as to paralyze it and render 

 it incapable of exertion. Such, especially, are those fishes which we denomi- 

 nate the torpedo-ray, and the electric eel or gymnote. Of these the former 

 has been longest known to naturalists ; for, in consequence of its being an 

 inhabitant of the Mediterranean Sea, it is described both by Greek and Roman 

 writers, who impute its distinctive faculty to, magic; and conceive that the 

 animal has a power, not only of concentrating this magical energy at option, 

 but if seized hold of by a fishing-hook, of impelling it through the whole 



