I wish very much that I had myself been a witness of this old woman’s remarkable instinct in even one case of the many that I have observed. But all that have been pointed out to me as subject to this new desire have turned out to have been possessed of very different ideas. Some were old invalids, weary of pain and ready to exchange the sorrows of life for death, but who would have preferred to be healed and to live on in comfort. When the possibility of recovering health was suggested to them, they showed signs of pleasure and of the renewal of hope. Investigations that I have made in homes for the aged have led to negative results on this subject. No case showed the slightest sign of the approach of the instinct of death. However, I have learned from Dr. Fauvel of one case to add to the instance noticed by Tokarski. It was the case of an old lady whose health and circumstances were comfortable and who before her death showed a real desire for it and stated it in much the same language as that quoted by Tokarski. In Fauvel’s case, however, the old lady had reached the age of only eighty-five years. It seems probable that this was a second genuine case of the appearance of the instinct of death, and it is therefore interesting to notice that that instinct, like the sexual instinct, is subject to variation in the date of its appearance. In my search for instances of the instinct of death, I made use of the large collection made by Lejoncourt,[329] but found that the information given by this author was very incomplete as to the mode of life and the last moments of his cases.