Natural Telepathy 



This observation of mine is not unique, as I 

 supposed, for later I heard it echoed as a matter 

 of course by the whalemen. Thus, when I talked 

 with my friend, Captain Rule, about the ways of 

 the great creatures he had followed in the old 

 whaling-days, he said, "The queerest habit of a 

 whale, or of any other critter I ever fell foul of, 

 was this: when I got my boat close enough to a 

 sperm-whale to put an iron into him, every other 

 sperm-whale within ten miles would turn flukes, 

 as if he had been harpooned, too." But he added 

 that he had not noticed the same contagion of 

 alarm, not in the same striking or instantaneous 

 way, when hunting the right or Greenland whale 

 perhaps because the latter is, as a rule, more 

 solitary in its habits. 



Wolves and caribou and whales are far from the 

 observation of most folk ; but the winter birds in 

 your own yard may some time give you a hint, at 

 least, of the same mysterious transference of an 

 impulse over wide distances. When you scatter 

 food for them during a cold snap or after a storm 

 (it is better not to feed them regularly, I think, 

 especially in mild weather when their proper food 

 is not covered with snow) your bounty is at first 

 neglected except by the house sparrows and 

 starlings. Unlike our native birds, these im- 

 ported foreigners are easily "pauperized," seeking 



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