And then four crows will fly away - Sixth Part

The mouse, a normal mouse of averages age and greatness, after spending twelve hours asleep, wakened up again. Apparently he seemed to be the same as before the injection, but actually moved in a different manner however. He had, in few words, a different air. He slowly started walking and pointing his feet and unusually moving the tail for a mouse; furthermore he sniffed and smelled the air and the ground of the cage. And I was much more surprised when I saw him stretching the anterior legs towards, before to idle them back; therefore, withdrawing them to curve the backbone actually to form a tall hump. The mouse was moving as a cat! That was the exceptional result! The animal seemed restless and took on turning around the cage with his feline behaviour. He was surely looking for some food. I gave him his usual mice food but after he had smelled it for a long time, he started over turning around visibly more nervous and hungrier. I opened a cat tin food and with my great surprise he devoured that meal in a flash. He grew up constantly in the following days, assuming a double massive structure compared to the same aged of his own race, then his growth seemed to halt. His epidermis had not suffered big mutations and not even its bony structure, at least externally showed to have introduced any peculiar characters, except for the moustaches and the legs, that seemed to have changed for a most congenial use to cat’s needing. In the movements and in the external behavior he moved as a cat though having the semblances of a mouse. A serious question had bothered me since the first days of the experiment: what would that animal, have done if I put him with another mice? And what would other cats do with him? Was he become a cat or had remained a mouse? With much trepidation I moved him to captivity with other mice: they started to squeak very afraid; it was evident that those small rodents had immediately warned the hostile presence. He had a good time pursuing them and grabbing them as cats make with mice, and at the end, exhausted and satisfied, he rested by a side of the big cage, while the little mice, to the opposite part, made heap, afraid and trembling. He didn't show any interest to eat them, perhaps because he was not hungry or even because something inside prevented him from doing it. The thing, after all, didn't interest me and I transferred him therefore with a real cat, and also there the success arose to me: they behaved as two bosom and jovial friends. At the beginning I thought to try his reproduction, but actually this would have been only an interesting and suggestive detour from my principal aim. In order to reach it I had to gather all my efforts, and the results of that first experiments constituted the base of my following job. First of all it was clear that the cerebral muscle, under particular conditions of temperature and environment, like those which took accidentally place that prophetic day in my laboratory, enucleated a particular, liquid and dense substance, containing the fundamental geniuses, that I call primaries; those which are responsible of the most intimate characters and most proper of the race. It was also evident that such substance appeared able to be moved into another brain and creating there a new habitat in which to regenerate its cells and with them to repurchase its functions and its aboriginal characters. I verified more times the exactness of these hypotheses, but only in a direction, that I define evolutionary. The experiment only succeed if the essence of a superior animal, in the steps of the evolutionary chain, was introduced in the brain of an inferior animal, while in the other way down, the phenomenon was verified in tone very attenuated if not straight deprived of consequence. I baptized the liquid essence ‘nouchefalon’', and I prepared hence myself to develop in the foreseen direction my experiments.

What would it happen if I transfused the ‘human nouchefalon ‘ in to the brain of another man?”

…..to be continued……