having the perfection of size, though not of maturity, was plucked and handed to the spectators, and, on being tasted, was found to be approaching ripeness, being sweetly acid.” We may add to this, that we have witnessed the same experiment in India and Thibet, and that more than once we provided the flower-pot ourselves, by emptying an old tin box of some Liebig extracts. We filled it with earth with our own hands, and planted in it a small root handed to us by the conjurer, and until the experiment was ended never once removed our eyes from the pot, which was placed _in our own room_. The result was invariably the same as above described. Does the reader imagine that any prestidigitator could produce the same manifestation under the same conditions? The learned Orioli, Corresponding Member of the Institute of France, gives a number of instances which show the marvellous effects produced by the will-power acting upon the invisible Proteus of the mesmerists. “I have seen,” says he, “certain persons, who simply by pronouncing certain words, arrest wild bulls and horses at headlong speed, and suspend in its flight the arrow which cleaves the air.” Thomas Bartholini affirms the same. Says Du Potet: “When I trace upon the floor with chalk or charcoal this figure ... a _fire_, a _light_ fixes itself on it. Soon it attracts to itself the person who approaches it; it detains and fascinates him ... and it is useless for him to try to cross the line. A _magic_ power compels him to stand still. At the end of a few moments he yields, uttering sobs.... _The cause is not in me_, it is in this entirely kabalistic sign; in vain would you employ violence.”[258] In a series of remarkable experiments made by Regazzoni in the {143} presence of certain well-known French physicians, at Paris, on the 18th of May, 1856, they assembled on one night together, and Regazzoni, with his finger, traced an imaginary kabalistic line upon the floor, over which he made a few rapid passes. It was agreed that the mesmeric subjects, selected by the investigators and the committee for the experiments, and all strangers to him, should be brought blindfold into the room, and caused to walk toward the line, without a word being spoken to indicate what was expected of them. The subjects moved along unsuspiciously till they came to the invisible barrier, when, as it is described, “their feet, _as if they had been suddenly seized and riveted_, adhere to the ground, while their bodies, carried forward by the rapid impulse of the motion, fall and strike the floor. The sudden rigidity of their limbs was like that of a frozen corpse, and their heels were rooted with mathematical precision upon the fatal line!”[259]