as "irregular."

A work embracing the whole subject has lately appeared in Paris, and,
as it is to form a volume of the valuable International Scientific
series, published in English, French, German, and Italian, it can
hardly fail to diffuse a correct popular understanding of the results
thus far attained. The book is called "Le Magnetism Animal" (Animal
Magnetism), and its authors are Messrs. Alfred Binet and Charles Fere
of the medical staff of the Salpetriere Hospital for Nervous Disorders
in Paris. It gives a history of the patient researches conducted at
that institution by the medical staff under the celebrated Prof.
Charcot during the past nine years. These experiments have been
prosecuted according to the most exact scientific methods, and with
the most extreme caution. The endeavor has been to obtain, first of
all, the most elementary psychic phenomena, and to test every step in
the investigations by separate experiment, specially devised to prove
the good faith of the subject and the reality of his hallucination, to
eliminate the possibility of unconscious suggestion, to establish
relations with similar phenomena of disease or health in the domain of
physiology and psychology, and to note the modifications which can be
brought about by altering the conditions of the experiments. The
authors possess the great scientific virtue of never dogmatising. In
the entire book not a single law is laid down, not a single hypothesis
is advanced, which is not reached by the most approved inductive
processes. A great service of the book lies in its enunciation of new
and trustworthy methods for studying the physiology of the brain in
health and disease, while it brings into the realm of physical
experiment vexed questions of psychology heretofore given over to
metaphysical methods exclusively.

THE HYPNOTIC SLEEP

Is described as a different form of natural sleep, and all the causes
which bring on fatigue are capable of bringing on hypnotism in
suitable subjects. Two of the leading hypnotic states are lethargy and
catalepsy, the former being analogous to deep sleep, and the latter to
a light slumber. In lethargy the respiratory movements are slow and
deep; in catalepsy slight, shallow, very slow, and separated by a long
interval. In lethargy the application of a magnet over the region of
the stomach causes profound modifications in the breathing and
circulation, while there is no such effect in catalepsy. This shows