Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/234

214 head, she began to sing. She remained very quiet, but only for a short time.

A gentleman told me of a somewhat similar process he employed in the West, when he had entrapped in the same box several prairie chickens. It being difficult for him to hold more than one chicken at a time, he would take one from the trap, hold it until quiet, shake it a little, and then lay it upon the snow. Sometimes he would have two or three thus lying there with their eyes closed. They would remain in this condition long enough for him to secure the whole catch. But, if one chanced to open its eyes when he was not looking, it would most certainly escape.

The explanation of all this does not seem difficult. In fact, we do not feel obliged to bring forward mesmerism, magnetism, nor even hypnotism, as having anything to do with the phenomena. They result simply from fear, as any one may easily prove for himself: the animal appreciates the power acting on it, and the uselessness of resisting the injury or the supposed injury inflicted. Here, of course, we must allow animals a certain amount of intelligence for such perceptions. After the animal has made resistance, and finds itself incapable of removing the obstacle, it lapses into quietude, to act again only when it supposes the restraint has been removed.

Hence, Kircher, apart from his "ribbons" and "chalk-lines," or "remembrance of chalk-lines and ribbons," is not so far out of the way in believing these phenomena to be due to the power of the animal's imagination. The same thing, under certain circumstances, is observed in man, and every one must be aware of the power the imagination often possesses over him.

In the "charming" of the lower animals by serpents we notice similar phenomena. The so-called "charmed animal" cannot move, from the fact that it does not believe it can. It has no power of will to put into operation those muscles necessary to carry it from danger. In other words, it is paralyzed with fear.

The cat playing with the mouse still further illustrates the same principle. The mouse knows he cannot escape, for, at every attempt to move, pussy's paw is put gently upon him, and he is pulled back within her reach. Hence, after a while the mouse does not move at all unless pussy "stirs him up," so to speak, with her paw.

Hence we cannot see anything very wonderful, after all, in these phenomena: they depend wholly and only upon fear, and are but an illustration of the power of the imagination among animals, and add to the evidence daily accumulating of the possession by the lower animals of a certain amount of intelligence.