ANIMALS AND PREVISION OF INTENDED CRIME.
[To THE EDITOR OF THZ " SPECTATOR:] SIR,—The extremely interesting stories you are inserting with regard to prevision by animals of mischief intended to their masters, opens up most important psychological questions. One has read, from time to time, so many well. authenticated instances of facts similar to those related by your correspondents, that mere coincidence cannot be accepted as an explanation. It has struck me that other circumstances point to a possible solution of the enigma. For example, over and over again, when riding or driving horses, more or less accustomed to me, at considerable distances—ranging up to twenty-five miles—from home, along roads that I have had every reason to believe the animals had never before travelled, I have given an absolutely loose rein, and willed that a certain turning should be taken, and it has been. Again, we are all familiar with anecdotes of complicated directions being carried out by collie-dogs and performing horses, elephants, and other animals. Now, while I cannot bring myself to believe that such animals understand all the words said to them, I have reason to doubt that, as in the case of my horses' mind-force of the nature now known as " suggestion " is the secret of their carrying out the wishes of their masters. But, if this be the case, is it quite irrational to hold that occasionally supra-human or extra-mundane influences may affect a horse or a dog endowed with an unusual susceptibility, such as characterises, among men and women, certain subjects of mesmeric, hypnotic, or so-called telepathic force P We are so far from yet possessing a large psychology, that I venture to think my view of the extraordinary facts under discussion is not wholly unscientific or absurd.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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