The tiger had a prominent part in the menageries of Indian and Chinese monarchs before the Christian era. It first appeared in Europe about the time of the eastern conquests of Alexander. Well known to the Romans, the animal was one of the most dreaded of all the beasts that appeared in the arena.
Despite its supposed ferocity, no great harm has been done in the few cases in which tigers have escaped from zoos. Often they have returned of their own accord.
The Fearsome Porcupine
There are more than 1,000 minute barbs on each of a porcupine’s many quills. This is the reason why such a quill is very difficult to withdraw from the flesh. The armament of quills, from a half inch to three inches long and developed from hairs of the underfur, renders the “spiny pig” of northern woodlands almost immune to attack. About its only enemy in nature is the giant weasel, the fisher, which has learned the trick of quickly turning the porcupine on its back.
The quills are very lightly attached to the porcupine’s body and become detached almost automatically when the creature is attacked. That they can be “shot”, however, is almost certainly a fallacy. A victim must actually be in contact with the animal.
The Plant That Stimulates Visions
In 1560 a Franciscan monk wrote of Aztecs eating a plant called peyotl “which gives them terrible and ludicrous visions, alleviates hunger and thirst, gives strength and incites to battle.” It was used, he reported “to bring about a state of ecstasy in which one had prophetic visions.”
This was the first known reference in literature to the mescal cactus, Lopophora williamsii, whose remarkable effects on the human mind ever since have aroused wonderment. Many have experimented with eating the so-called “buttons” of this cactus and have reported all sorts of terrible and ludicrous visions. But no two experimenters apparently have the same experience. After nearly 400 years the supposed active principle, mescaline, has been extracted and the same effects produced either by swallowing or injection of as little as a half gram.
First comes a decided nausea which lasts about two hours. This passes and is followed by weird hallucinations. One’s own body seems distorted, with some parts exceedingly small and some very large. A common experience is the feeling that only one’s head is the self. The rest of the body is away somewhere in space. The time sense is badly distorted. Minutes stretch out into hours and days, days and hours are contracted into minutes. There are strange optical delusions—lights flashing before the eyes and floating patches of color. Seldom, however, are actual hallucinatory objects seen.
The consumer has the impression that he thinks more clearly than at other times but it has been found that this thought is based more on the sounds than meaning of words. There is a tendency, for example, to argue in puns. An invisible barrier seems to separate one from the rest of the world. This condition lasts for two or three hours, and then passes away, leaving no after affects. The condition has been likened to schizophrenia.