Another distraction awaited us. Flocks of Turkeys were not rare, roaming at their own sweet will and gobbling up the Locusts around the farms. If no watcher hove in sight, we had great sport. Each of us would seize a Turkey, tuck her head under her wing, rock it in this attitude for a moment and then place her on the ground, lying on her side. The bird no longer budged. The whole flock of Turkeys was subjected to our hypnotic handling; and the meadow assumed the aspect of a battle-field strewn with the dead and dying. And now look out for the farmer's wife! The loud gobbling of the harassed birds had told her of our wicked pranks. She would run up armed with a whip. But we had good legs in those days! And we had a good laugh too, behind the hedges, which favoured our retreat! O delightful days when we put the Turkeys to sleep, can I recover the skill which I then possessed? To-day it is no longer the playful trick of a schoolboy; it is a matter of serious research. I happen to have the very subject that I need: a Turkey-hen, doomed soon to be the victim of our Christmas merry-making. I repeat with her the method of manipulation which I employed so successfully on the banks of the Aveyron. I tuck her head well under her wing and, molding it in this attitude with both hands, I rock the bird gently up and down for a couple of minutes. The strange effect is produced; my childhood's manoeuvres obtained no better result. Laid on the ground, on her side and left to herself, my patient is a lifeless bundle. One would think her dead, if a slight rise and fall of the plumage did not reveal the breathing. She looks really like a dead bird which, in a last convulsion, had drawn its chilled feet, with their shrivelled toes, under its belly. The spectacle has a tragic air; and I feel overcome by a certain anxiety when I gaze upon the results of my evil spells. Poor Turkey! What if she were never to wake again! We need not be afraid: she is waking; she stands up, staggering a little, it is true, with drooping tail and a shamefaced expression. That soon passes off; not a trace of it remains. In a few moments the bird is once more what it was before the experiment. This torpor, the mean between true sleep and death, is of variable duration. When repeatedly provoked in my Turkey-hen, with suitable intervals of repose, immobility lasts sometimes for half an hour and sometimes for a few minutes. Here, as in the insect, it would be very difficult to analyse the causes of these differences. With the Guinea-fowl I succeed even better. The torpor lasts so long that I become alarmed by the bird's condition. The plumage reveals no trace of breathing. I ask myself, anxiously, whether the bird is not actually dead. I push it a little way along the ground with my foot. The patient does not stir. I do it again. And lo, the Guinea-fowl frees her head, stands up, regains her balance and scurries off! Her state of lethargy has lasted more than half an hour.