Page:Faithhealingchri00buckiala.djvu/138

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124
DREAMS, NIGHTMARE, AND SOMNAMBULISM

dream; and, according to Thompson, among birds the stork, the canary, the eagle, and the parrot, and the elephant as well as the horse and the dog, are "incited" in their dreams. Bechstein holds that the bullfinch dreams, and gives a case where the dream took on the character of nightmare and the bird fell from its perch; and four great authorities say that occasionally dreaming becomes so vivid as to lead to somnambulism. Guer gives a case of a somnambulistic watch-dog which prowled in search of imaginary strangers or foes, and exhibited toward them a whole series of pantomimic actions, including barking. Dryden says:

The little birds in dreams the songs repeat,

and Dendy's "Philosophy of Mystery" quotes from the "Domestic Habits of Birds" in proof of this.

We have often observed this in a wild bird. On the night of the 6th of April, 1811, about ten o'clock, a dunnock (Accentor modularis) was heard in the garden to go through its usual song more than a dozen times very faintly, but distinctly enough for the species to be recognized. The night was cold and frosty, but might it not be that the little musician was dreaming of summer and sunshine? Aristotle, indeed, proposes the question—whether animals hatched from eggs ever dream? Macgrave, in reply, expressly says that his "parrot Laura often arose in the night and prattled while half asleep."

Third. The dreams of the blind are of great importance, and the fact that persons born blind never dream of seeing is established by the investigations of competent inquirers. So far as we know, there is no proof of a single instance of one born blind ever in dreams fancying that he saw. The subject has been treated in the "New Princeton Review" by Joseph Jastrow, who has examined nearly two