_The Influence of Magnets_.--We have briefly referred to the action of magnets on the muscles in speaking of the physiological phenomena, but they possess other properties which hardly come under that head. They have the power of attracting hypnotised subjects. Thus, if a good-sized magnet is placed at some little distance from the subject, and behind a screen so that he cannot see it, after a time he will get up and go towards it. If now another magnet be placed at an equal distance behind him, he will stop and remain as it were balanced between the two. By withdrawing one or other he can be drawn backwards or forwards. Further, he can be charged with magnetism by placing near him a large magnet with five ends. If it be suddenly removed and hidden in another room, he is impelled to follow it with such force that he will fling aside all obstacles in his way, and tracking it step by step will walk straight up to it. 'Once he sights it, he either remains in dumb contemplation of it in front of its two poles, or else lays his hands on both of the poles with a kind of profound satisfaction.' These experiments with magnets are very exhausting. * * * * * Finally, if the senses can be so heightened as in the cases already cited from Braid and the clinique of La Salpêtrière, it requires no great stretch of imagination to suppose them carried still further until they become comparable to those inexplicable faculties which we call instinct in animals, that for instance by which animals--cats, dogs, and sheep--can find their way home, sometimes over hundreds of miles of unknown country. Concerning the faculty of presensation, it is worth while to say a little more. The early mesmerists made a great point of the power of some patients to diagnose the condition of another. Dr. Puysegur's patient Joly, mentioned above, possessed the faculty to an unusual degree. He was an educated man, of good position, and could express himself intelligibly:-- C'est une sensation veritable que j'éprouve dans un endroit correspondant à la partie qui souffre chez celui que je touche: ma main va naturellement se porter à l'endroit de son mal, et je ne peux pas plus m'y tromper que je ne pourrois le faire en portant ma main où je souffrirois moi-meme.