Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/479

Rh this is not the result of accident and conditions. There are strong reasons for believing that a slight change of surroundings both mental and physical would explode the degeneration which exists and bring to light insanity, criminality, or idiocy. Instances are not infrequent of acts of lawlessness and crime in inebriates previously law-abiding and honest citizens. It was not the last use of spirits which provoked the act; this only exploded a condition which had been gathering like a storm long before. The direction and form which this disturbance would take could not always be foreseen.

The designing man who gives spirits and suggests crime and wrongdoing is in peril of being the victim himself. He is practically exploding a state of insanity, and trusting that he may be able to control it.

The inebriate or moderate drinker who uses spirits to give courage to commit some act makes the same blunder of supposing that he can paralyze the higher governing centers and still direct and control the lower faculties. Where imperative ideas and delusions already possess the brain, alcohol may intensify them for a time, but confusion and uncertainty of thought and act are inevitable.

The claim that alcohol is used for the purpose of committing crime should be a question open for evidence, and one to be considered doubtful until proved by facts that can have no other meaning. Crime committed when under the influence of spirits will be found as a rule to follow uniform lines and be very much alike in methods of execution. If spirits have been used for the special purpose of facilitating the commission of crime, very wide differences will appear. No two cases will be alike, and doubt and uncertainty will complicate the factors in every case.

These are some of the many new questions coming into prominence in the courtroom with increasing frequency every year. The present obscurity and confusion of law rulings and medical theories will be cleared away in the near future, when the subject is studied from the scientific point of view.

, of Paris, has a story of a heron in England which, having lost its mate, sought consolation in constituting itself a kind of shepherd for the village. It brought the cattle to the stables, and took upon itself the supervision of the poultry, adjusting all the quarrels, and driving away unruly members of the brood. It also assumed the charge of the horses when they were harnessed, and at the first sign of restiveness restored them to quiet by giving them a peck in the nostrils. One day, when two calves had escaped, the heron, having tried unsuccessfully to drive them back, remained near them and watched them till the men came in search of them.