vital importance), when he stops at the painful places pointed out by the patient.* After a few seconds, the contraction of A passes to his partner B, who has served as a receiver. This moment is announced by nervous shocks which appear in the arm of B, and indicate the moment of impregnation. The hands of the two partners are then separated and the patient A remains isolated. B, who has received the transfer of the morbid condition, is then taken in hand, and as he has remained in the lethargic condition, he is methodically awakened by passing him through the phases we have already indicated of catalepsy and somnambulism. When he has reached the stage of lucid somnambulism, it is well to stop in order to question him. A strange and convincing phenomenon then occurs which shows the study of neurological phenomena in quite a new light. Thus B speaks, but he no longer speaks as if he were B, as if he were himself; under the influence of the magnet, the nervous state of A with his contraction has been imparted to him: and with his contraction he has borrowed from him his psychic personality, and if, for example, B is a woman, she talks of her mustache, of her whiskers, of her short-cut hair: she takes the name of A, and gives the details of his illness, which are sometimes very precise, and have occasionally enabled me to make a more accurate diagnosis.

The experiment can also be varied thus: If you place in the presence of B a subject, A, suffering from tremors or shaking paralysis, B immediately receives the tremors of his partner and tembles in a rhythmic and continuous way, with all the characteristics of the real patient. If he be placed in connection with a subject, A' or A", afflicted, for instance, with hemiplegia, by proceeding in the way we have just indicated with a magnet, the hemiplegia of A" is bodily transferred to B, together with flabbiness of the arm, loss of power in the leg, and, what is more, with deviation of the tongue and difficulty in speaking. In fact I have noticed that in certain circumstances, a subject suffering from palpitations could transfer to a receptive subject his own palpitations, and the increase in the heart

* See the isolated influence of each pole of a magnetized rod at the end of this article.

beats could be detected instantaneously by auscultation. Sometimes the relief was immediate.

The transmission of the nervous state of a subject, A, to a receptive subject, B, is so manifest a reality, that by means of a dynamometer examined before and after the experiment you can measure the dynamic power lost by the receptive subject B and gained by the patient A. This quantity of acquired dynamic power is not always equal to the quantity emitted, but the physical fact in itself is proved. Paralytics who have for some time undergone transference gain on the left or the right side a dynamic power they did not possess before. Sometimes this gain amounts to 10 and 12 kilos after a few days, as can be confirmed by examining the clinical acts of my term of office at the Charité Hospital,* and therein lies the true secret of the cure of certain chronic paraplegias and of the remarkable relief of a great number of nervous troubles of long standing.

As soon as the receptive subject B, in a state of lucid somnambulism, has revealed his neurological condition, and undergone the transference of the morbid condition of A, you awake him by the usual processes. The awakening takes place instantaneously, and at the same time that he becomes conscious of the exterior world, you witness that strange immediate disappearance of all the morbid conditions, of which he was the temporary support. Thus the phenomena of contractions and tremors vanish on the spot, and the impassive subject, unconscious of all that has passed, retains no memory, no feeling of suffering, and even asks for a new transference for you must know that the subjects used as transfers are all neuropathic, and have a dim idea that in this way they get rid of some of their ill-balanced nervous force. The sole result is the relief of the patient, whose condition is sometimes modified at once, or, as a general rule, after the expiration of two or three hours.

These are indeed strange phenomena which upset what we think we know in neurology, and in some respects approach the marvellous. But whatever one may say or think, they are real facts. They are therapeutic effects which are verified

See the clinical bulletins in each number of the Review of Hypnology.,

66

COMPARATIVELY little is known as yet, even in this age of publicity, about the domestic arrangements and private life of fishes. Not that the creatures themselves shun the wiles of the interviewer, or are at all shy and retiring, as a matter of delicacy, about their family affairs; on the contrary, they display a striking lack of reticence in their native element, and are so far from pushing parental affection to a quixotic extreme that many of them, like the common rabbit immortalized by Mr. Squeers, frequently devour their own offspring." But nature herself opposes certain obvious obstacles to the pursuit of knowledge in the great deep, which render it difficult for the ardent naturalist, however much he may be so disposed, to carry on his observations with the same facility as in the case of birds and quadrupeds. You can't drop in upon most fish, casually, in their own homes; and when you confine them in aquariums, where your opportunities of watching them through a sheet of plate-glass are considerably greater, most of the captives get huffy under the narrow restrictions of their prison life, and obstinately refuse to rear a brood of hereditary helots for the mere gratification of your scientific curiosity.

Still, by hook and by crook (especially the former), by observation here and experiment there, naturalists in the end have managed to piece together a considerable mass of curious and interesting information of an out-of-the-way sort about the domestic habits and manners of sundry piscine races. And, indeed, the morals of fish are far more varied and divergent than the uniform nature of the world they inhabit might lead an à priori philosopher to imagine. To the eye of the mere casual observer every fish would seem at first sight to be a mere fish, and to differ but little in sentiments and ethical culture from all the rest of his remote cousins. But when one comes to look closer at their character and antecedents, it becomes evident at once that there is a deal of unsuspected originality and caprice about sharks and flat-fish. Instead of conforming throughout to a single plan, as the young, the gay, the giddy, and the thoughtless are too prone to conclude, fish are in reality as various and variable in their mode of

life as any other great group in the animal kingdom. Monogamy and polygamy, socialism and individualism, the patriarchal and matriarchal types of government, the oviparous and viviparous methods of reproduction, perhaps even the dissidence of dissent and esoteric Buddhism, all alike are well represented in one family or another of this extremely eclectic and philosophically unprejudiced class of animals. If you want a perfect model of domestic virtue, for example, where can you find it in higher perfection than in that exemplary and devoted father, the common great pipe-fish of the North Atlantic and the British Seas? This high principled lophobranch is so careful of his callow and helpless young that he carries about the unhatched eggs with him under his own tail, in what scientific ichthyologists pleasantly describe as a sub caudal pouch or cutaneous receptacle. There they hatch. out in perfect security, free from the dangers that beset the spawn and fry of so many other less tender-hearted kinds; and as soon as the little pipe-fish are big enough to look after themselves the sac divides spontaneously down the middle, and allows them to escape, to shift for themselves in the broad Atlantic. Even so, however, the juniors take care always to keep tolerably near that friendly shelter, and creep back into it again on any threat of danger, exactly as baby kangaroos do into their mother's marsupium. ther-fish, in fact, has gone to the trouble and expense of developing out of his own tissues a membranous bag, on purpose to hold the eggs and young during the first stages of their embryonic evolution. This bag is formed by two folds of the skin, one of which grows out from each side of the body, the free margins being firmly glued together in the middle by a natural exudation, while the eggs are undergoing incubation, but opening once more in the middle to let the little fish out as soon as the process of hatching is fairly finished.

The fa

So curious a provision for the safety of the young in the pipe-fish may be compared to some extent, as I hinted above, with the pouch in which kangaroos and other marsupial animals carry their cubs after birth, till they have attained an age of complete independence. But the

strangest part of it all is the fact that while in the kangaroo it is the mother who owns the pouch and takes care of the young, in the pipe-fish it is the father, on the contrary, who thus specially provides for the safety of his defenceless offspring. And what is odder still, this topsy-turvy arrangement (as it seems to us) is the common rule throughout the class of fishes. For the most part, it must be candidly admitted by their warmest admirer, fish make very bad parents indeed. They lay their eggs anywhere on a suitable spot, and as soon as they have once deposited them, like the ostrich in Job, they go on their way rejoicing, and never bestow another passing thought upon their deserted progeny. But if ever a fish does take any pains in the education and social upbringing of its young, you're pretty sure to find on inquiry it's the father-not as one would naturally expect, the mother-who devotes his time and attention to the congenial task of hatching or feeding them. It is he who builds the nest, and sits upon the eggs, and nurses the young, and imparts moral instruction (with a snap of his jaw or a swish of his tail) to the bold, the truant, the cheeky, or the imprudent; while his unnatural spouse, well satisfied with her own part in having merely brought the helpless eggs into this world of sorrow, goes off on her own account in the giddy whirl of society, forgetful of the sacred claims of her wriggling offspring upon a mother's heart.

In the pipe-fish family, too, the ardent evolutionist can trace a whole series of instructive and illustrative gradations in the development of this instinct and the corresponding pouch-like structure among the male fish. With the least highly-evolved types, like the long-nosed pipe-fish of the English Channel, and many allied forms from European seas, there is no pouch at all, but the father of the family carries the eggs about with him, glued firmly on to the surface of his abdomen by a natural mucus. In a somewhat more advanced tropical kind, the ridges of the abdomen are slightly dilated, so as to form an open groove, which loosely holds the eggs, though its edges do not meet in the middle as in the great pipe-fish. Then come yet other more progressive forms, like the great pipe-fish himself, where the folds meet so as to produce a complete sac, which opens at maturity to let out its lit

tle inmates. And finally, in the common Mediterranean sea-horses, which you can pick up by dozens on the Lido at Venice, and a specimen of which exists in the dried form in every domestic museum, the pouch is permanently closed by coalescence of the edges, leaving a narrow opening in front, through which the small hippocampi creep out one by one as soon as they consider themselves capable of buffeting the waves of the Adriatic.

Fish that take much care of their offspring naturally don't need to produce eggs in the same reckless abundance as those dissipated kinds that leave their spawn exposed on the bare sandy bottom, at the mercy of every comer who chooses to take a bite at it. They can afford to lay a smaller number, and to make each individual egg much larger and richer in proportion than their rivals. This plan, of course, enables the young to begin life far better provided with muscles and fins than the tiny little fry which come out of the eggs of the improvident species. For example, the cod-fish lays nine million odd eggs; but anybody who has ever eaten fried cod's-roe must needs have noticed that each individual ovum was so very small as to be almost indistinguishable to the naked eye. Thousands of these infinitesimal specks are devoured before they hatch out by predaceous fish; thousands more of the young fry are swallowed alive during their helpless infancy by the enemies of their species. Imagine the very fractional amount of parental affection which each of the nine million must needs put up with! On the other hand, there is a paternally-minded group of cat-fish known as the genus Arius of Ceylon, Australia, and other tropical parts, the males of which carry about the ova loose in their mouths, or rather in an enlargement of the pharynx, somewhat resembling the pelican's pouch; and the spouses of these very devoted sires lay accordingly only very few ova, ali told, but each almost as big as a hedge sparrow's egg-a wonderful contrast to the tiny mites of the codfish. To put it briefly, the greater the amount of protection afforded the eggs, the smaller the number and the larger the size. And conversely, the larger the size of the egg to start with, the better fitted to begin the battle of life is the young fish when first turned out on a cold world upon his own resources.

This is a general law, indeed, that runs through all nature, from London slums to the deep sea. Wasteful species produce many young, and take but little care of them when once produced. Economical species produce very few young, but start each individual well-equipped for its place in life, and look after them closely till they can take care of themselves in the struggle for existence. And on the average, however many or however few the offspring to start with, just enough attain maturity in the long run to replace their parents in the next generation. Were it otherwise, the sea would soon become one solid mass of herring, cod, and mackerel. These cat-fish, however, are not the only good fathers that carry their young (like woodcock) in their own mouths. A fresh-water species of the Sea of Galilee, Chromis andrea by name (dedicated by science to the memory of that fisherman apostle, St. Andrew, who must often have netted them), has the same habit of hatching out its young in its own gullet and here again it is the male fish upon whom this apparently maternal duty devolves, just as it is the male cassowary that sits upon the eggs of his unnatural mate, and the male emu that tends the nest, while the hen bird looks on superciliously and contents herself with exercising a general friendly supervision of the nursery department. I may add parenthetically that in most fish families the eggs are fertilized after they have been laid, instead of before, which no doubt accounts for the seeming anomaly.

Still, good mothers too may be found among fish, though far from frequently. One of the Guiana cat-fishes, known as Aspredo, very much resembles her country woman the Surinam toad in her nursery arrangements. Of course you know the Surinam toad-whom not to know argues yourself unknown-that curious creature that carries her eggs in little pits on her back, where the young hatch out and pass through their tadpole stage in a slimy fluid, emerging at last from the cells of this living honeycomb only when they have attained the full amphibian honors of four-legged maturity. Well, Aspredo among cat-fish manages her brood in much the same fashion; only she carries her eggs beneath her body instead of on her back like her amphibious rival. When spawning time approaches, and Aspredo's

fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, the lower side of her trunk begins to assume, by anticipation, a soft and spongy texture, honeycombed with pits, between which are arranged little spiky protuberances. After laying her eggs, the mother lies flat upon them on the river bottom, and presses them into the spongy skin, where they remain safely attached until they hatch out and begin to manage for themselves in life. It is curious that the only two creatures on earth which have hit out independently this original mode of providing for their offspring should both be citizens of Guiana, where the rivers and marshes must probably harbor some special danger to be thus avoided, not found in equal intensity in other fresh

waters.

A prettily marked fish of the Indian Ocean, allied, though not very closely, to the pipe-fishes, has also the distinction of handing over the young to the care of the mother instead of the father. Its name is Solenostoma (I regret that no more popular title exists), and it has a pouch, formed in this case by a pair of long broad fins, within which the eggs are attached by interlacing threads that push out from the body. Probably in this instance nutriment is actually provided through these threads for the use of the embryo, in which case we must regard the mechanism as very closely analogous indeed to that which obtains among mammals.

One

Its

Some few fish, indeed, are truly viviparous; among them certain blennies and carps, in which the eggs hatch out entirely within the body of the mother. of the most interesting of these divergent types is the common Californian and Mexican silver-fish, an inhabitant of the bays and inlets of sub-tropical America. chief peculiarity and title to fame lies in the extreme bigness of its young at birth. The full-grown fish runs to about ten inches in length, fisherman's scale, while the fry measure as much as three inches apiece; so that they lie, as Professor Seeley somewhat forcibly expresses it, "packed in the body of the parent, as close as herrings in a barrel." This strange habit of retaining the eggs till after they have hatched out is not peculiar to fish among egg-laying animals, for the common little brown English lizard is similarly viviparous, though most of its relatives elsewhere deposit their eggs to