enjoying a quiet natural sleep.' In reality, however, she was in the somnambulistic state, and talked calmly of the operation. During the whole time that the operation lasted--from ten to twelve minutes--she continued to converse quietly with M. Cloquet, 'and did not exhibit the slightest sign of sensibility. There was no motion of the limbs or of the features, no change in the respiration nor in the voice; no motions even in the pulse. The patient continued in the same state of automatic indifference and impassibility in which she had been some minutes before the operation.' For forty-eight hours after this, the patient remained in the somnambulistic state, showing no sign of pain during the subsequent dressing of the wound. When awakened from this prolonged sleep she had no recollection of what had passed in the interval; 'but on being informed of the operation, and seeing her children around her, she experienced a very lively emotion which the "magnetiser" checked by immediately setting her asleep.' Certainly none of the hypnotised 'subjects' of Mr. Braid's experiments showed more complete abstraction from their normal condition than this lady; and other cases cited in Bertrand's work, 'Le Magnetisme Animal en France' (1826), are almost equally remarkable. As it does not appear that in any of these cases Braid's method of producing hypnotism by causing the eyes, or rather their optical axes, to be converged upon a point, was adopted, we must conclude that this part of the method is not absolutely essential to success. Indeed, the circumstance that in some of Braid's public experiments numbers of the audience became hypnotised without his knowledge, shows that the more susceptible 'subjects' do not require to contemplate a point near and slightly above the eyes, but may be put into the true hypnotic state by methods which, with the less susceptible, produce only the electro-biological condition. It will be well, however, to inquire somewhat carefully into this point. My present object, I would note, is not merely to indicate the remarkable nature of the phenomena of hypnotism, but to consider these phenomena with direct reference to their probable cause. It may not be possible to obtain a satisfactory explanation of them. But it is better to view them as phenomena to be accounted for than merely as surprising but utterly inexplicable circumstances. Now we have fortunately the means of determining the effect of the physical relations involved in these experiments, apart from those which are chiefly due to imagination. For animals can be hypnotised, and the conditions necessary for this effect to be fully produced have been ascertained.