found the key of her mind, that by the slightest touch she awakened the conception of whatever she wished to communicate, and with which she instantly complied.

It may assist our apprehension of this variety of intimations, communicated by touches so slight, when we reflect on those we in all our movements receive from the muscular sense,* by which my hand at this moment is directed, and by which all the adjustments of the artisan, the musician, the

ticular sort of sound through the nose indicates her approval or disapproval accordingly. I have not the slightest doubt of the truth of these statements; and I find that Mr. Collier, who lectures on such subjects, had seen her."

This strange exception to a law of mind I hope to have an opportunity of further investigating. The law which prompts us to will the end (self-preservation) prompts us also to will the means.

"You take my house, when you do take the prop
That doth sustain my house; you take my life,
When you do take the means whereby I live."

Merchant of Venice.

*The elephant has in his muscular sense a natural sign of want of firmness in ground to support his weight. This observation is from a gentleman (Mr. Elliott) long resident in India. Horses and mules passing the Alps feel before they tread.

sculptor, and even the orator are regulated in the modulation of his voice and gesture. The slightest touch of the whisker (a real hair-trigger)* of a reposing cat, or any of the feræ, and probably on the tentaculæ of animals much lower in the scale of being, suffices to rouse into a state of tension and preparation for action the adjusting muscles of every organ of sense. Yet in the nerves

* Nerves have been distinctly traced into the bulbs of the whiskers of seals, and I think, too, in some of the feræ. There are satisfactory preparations of these in the Museum of the College of Surgeons, kindly shown me by Professor Owen. If a feather be swept lightly over the fine down of the cheek, a sensation of irritation so intolerable will be excited, that we instinctively and roughly rub the part till it is allayed. This may assist those inattentive to the strong effects of apparently slight causes in apprehending the intimations of near objects communicated to the blind by vibrations of the air.

"Time has been, my senses would have cool'd
To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair
Would, at a dismal treatise, rouse and stir,
As life were in it."

Macbeth.

When the sensibility of these nerves is morbidly acute we express it by hair-sore, Horrepilatio, Plica Polonica, &c.

which convey these intimations not the minutest change could be detected by any of our senses. I laid the phrenic nerve of a dog (just killed) on the field of a powerful microscope, but could not detect any change in it, while the diaphragm contracted convulsively whenever the upper end of the nerve was touched with silver and zinc. I have repeated the same experiment since with the crural nerves of frogs, and with the same result.

All who hear me must have observed, that comatose persons cannot be fed without danger of suffocation, till the adjusting muscles of the mouth, tongue, and pharynx have been excited to their appropriate action by rubbing the lips with a spoon. Every fibre of our body, and every motion of the mind, probably, has its key of re-transmission, and the problem to be solved in our intercourse with the deaf, dumb, and blind, is how to place our touch so as to make them responsive. I found in the year 1793, that I could reexcite the suspended contractions of the heart, whether in or out of the body of a frog or cat, by the application of zinc and silver to

its external surface, after every mechanical and chemical stimulus had been tried in vain. Dr. Read, in an able paper read last year at Glasgow, and Sir H. Cooper, by experiments performed in Guy's Hospital, proved that fresh oxygenated blood was the appropriate excitor of the internal surfaces of the heart and brain, when the beating of the one and the vitality of the other had been artificially suspended. Even without contact, a sense of tension may be excited between the eyebrows by alternately advancing and withdrawing any metallic points. Those of scissors seldom fail to produce a strong sensation on persons under 30. I need not remind you of the tremendous effects produced by apparently slight causes in the instances of malaria, contagious diseases, inoculation with scarcelyperceptible particles, fainting from an odour, and fever from the fragrance of hay.

Confining the observation to touch only, I have seen the most rapid touch of letters embossed for the use of the blind read by the tiny fingers of children scarcely out of infancy, and their intelligence thus excited

nearly as readily and correctly as ordinary print would have been read and apprehended by children of the same age, whose sight was perfect.

But the touch is not the only sense which becomes more cognisant of its appropriate objects when other media of communication are obstructed.

A deaf and dumb teacher, at the Kentroad Asylum, interpreted accurately every movement of Mr. Watson's lips, while that gentleman was deliberately and very articulately giving him directions. I know a young lady, deaf and dumb, who collects the meaning of her sister before half the requisite expressions of the finger-alphabet can have been made, and who is so expert at reading off the motions of the lips, that her mother is obliged to hold her hand before her face whenever she has occasion to speak of her to another.*

* "To train the intellect merely to impart knowledge to the blind, is comparatively an easy task; for so doth the soul thirst for knowledge, that it will attain it even when half its avenues are blocked up. And a sponge placed in water will not more certainly imbibe