on, and of speaking; the great annual circle of
actions so apparent in birds in their times of breeding and moulting; the
monthly circles of many female animals; and the diurnal circles of sleeping
and waking, of fulness and inanition.

6. Some links of successive trains or of synchronous tribes of action may
be left out without disjoining the whole. Such are our usual trains of
recollection; after having travelled through an entertaining country, and
viewed many delightful lawns, rolling rivers, and echoing rocks; in the
recollection of our journey we leave out the many districts, that we
crossed, which were marked with no peculiar pleasure. Such also are our
complex ideas, they are catenated tribes of ideas, which do not perfectly
resemble their correspondent perceptions, because some of the parts are
omitted.

7. If an interrupted circle of actions is not entirely dissevered, it will
continue to proceed confusedly, till it comes to the part of the circle,
where it was interrupted.

The vital motions in a fever from drunkenness, and in other periodical
diseases, are instances of this circumstance. The accidental inebriate does
not recover himself perfectly till about the same hour on the succeeding
day. The accustomed drunkard is disordered, if he has not his usual
potation of fermented liquor. So if a considerable part of a connected
tribe of action be disturbed, that whole tribe goes on with confusion, till
the part of the tribe affected regains its accustomed catenations. So
vertigo produces vomiting, and a great secretion of bile, as in
sea-sickness, all these being parts of the tribe of irritative catenations.

8. Weaker catenated trains may be dissevered by the sudden exertion of the
stronger. When a child first attempts to walk across a room, call to him,
and he instantly falls upon the ground. So while I am thinking over the
virtues of my friends, if the tea-kettle spurt out some hot water on my
stocking; the sudden pain breaks the weaker chain of ideas, and introduces
a new group of figures of its own. This circumstance is extended to some
unnatural trains of action, which have not been confirmed by long habit; as
the hiccough, or an ague-fit, which are frequently curable by surprise. A
young lady about eleven years old had for five days had a contraction of
one muscle in her fore arm, and another in her arm, which occurred four or
five times every minute; the muscles were seen to leap, but without bending