August 6, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



123 



to be somewhere in the bight of sea between 

 Cape Barhegat and Fire Island liglit. 



— Dr. Rufus Haymond, a well-known student 

 of vertebrate zoology, and one of the pioneer 

 naturalists of the Ohio valley, died at Brookville, 

 Ind., July 29, at the age of 81 years. He was a 

 native of Virginia, and came to Indiana in 1826. 



— Mr. B. W. Evermann, late of Indiana uni- 

 versity, has been elected to the chair of natural 

 sciences at the State normal school, Terre Haute, 

 Ind. 



— Mr. George H. Boehmer of the Smithsonian 

 institution leaves Washington during the present 

 month on a European mission, as agent for the 

 library of congress and the Smithsonian, in per- 

 fecting a more systematic and satisfactory method 

 for the international exchange of public docu- 

 ments published by each country. 



— Mr. Xathanel H. E. Dawson of Selma, Ala- 

 bama, has been nominated by the President for 

 the position of commissioner of education. 



— Rev. Charles Henry Appleton Dall, father of 

 Dr. Wm. H. Dall, the conchologist, died at 

 Darjiling, India, on July 18. He liad been for 

 more than thirty years in the missionary service. 



— Spirits of turpentine will remove unpleasant 

 odors from the hands when all other deodorants 

 fail. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



*t*Corresijondents are requested to be as brief as possible. The 

 writer's name is in all cases rcQuired as proof of good faith. 



Feline telepathy. 



In the issue of your admirable journal for July 31, 

 1885, the then editor, my esteemed friend Prof. S. H. 

 Scudder, a distinguished histologist of special emin- 

 ence in entomology, does me the honor to notice my 

 censorship of the American society for psychical re- 

 search, and passes the compliment of calling me ' the 

 well-known ghost-smeller,' perhaps with some ' oc- 

 cult ' reference to my psychical researches. 



Neither affirming nor denying this hard impeach- 

 ment, I beg to cite Professor Scudder himself in con- 

 nection with the interesting and instructive psychic 

 researches now in progress concerning telepathy. 

 I submit that the eminent entomologist is in his own 

 person a demonstration of telepathy ; and no false 

 delicacy should make him shrink from offering him- 

 self as a good subject for telepathic experimentation 

 on the part of the members of the American society 

 for psychical research. 



No one more than myself, among Professor Scud- 

 der's friends, sincerely deplores the painful affection 

 of the respiratory passages from which he suffers 

 when brought within a certain radius of a cat. It 

 may be some mental consolation, if no alleviation of 

 the difficulty of breathing, for the professor to reflect 

 that his case is an interesting and valuable one for 



the purposes of psychic research, since it is able 

 thus to offer an important contribution to the science 

 of telepathy. 



If I am correctly informed, Professor Scudder does 

 not require to see the cat, or hear the cat, or smell the 

 cat, or taste the cat, or touch the cat, in order to be- 

 come painfully alive to the proximity of the animal, 

 in the way above said. None of his physical senses is 

 concerned in the psvchic cognition of the cat and its 

 painful bodily result. This is telepathy, namely, 

 thought-transfer without any known or recognized 

 physical or mechanical means of communication. 

 Professor Scudder is evidently telepathic with cats, 

 as a psychist would express it. What subtile con- 

 nection there is between the anthropoid and the 

 aeluroid organisms in this case, resulting in such vio- 

 lent antipathy and respiratory derangement on the 

 one hand and such complacent sympathy or entire 

 apathy on the other, is hard to say ; though it may 

 be suggested that asthmatic breathing resembles 

 purring in some audible respects. Whether any real 

 mind-reading is here involved is doubtful, because 

 it is impossible to say what cats think of Professor 

 Scudder ; though what this amiable gentleman thinks 

 of cats, while under the shock of the feline tele- 

 pathic impact, and also subsequently, is well known 

 to the large circle of his friends. 



When I was appointed by the Theosophical so- 

 ciety its official censor of the American society for 

 psychical research — a delicate and difficult office, 

 which I reluctantly accepted about a year ago in the 

 interests of psychic science — it became incumbent 

 upon me to explain to the psychical society any fact 

 in psychic science which they might succeed in 

 establishing. 



I cannot admit that the said society has established 

 this case of telepathy, considering that I have been 

 obliged to do so for them. But since one of their 

 members has been the unv/itting means of demon- 

 strating feline telepathy. I pass the credit of the dis- 

 covery over to the psychical society, with the com- 

 pliments of the Theosophical society, and offer my 

 explanation of the matter. It is the same ' Explana- 

 tion of telepathy ' which was printed in the New 

 York Nation of Jan. 15, 1885, after Professor Scud- 

 der, with tender regard for my reputation as a 

 scientist, had declined to publish it in Science, of 

 which he was then editor. 



All animals, plants, and minerals disengage from 

 their bodies a substance variously called ' biogen,^ 

 'od,' ' akasa,' etc., this aura or ultra sensible emana- 

 tion having certain modes of motion which are the 

 direct means of ' phenomenalizing ' or making ap- 

 parent to the natural senses those effects known as 

 ' mesmeric,' ' magnetic,' ' nervauric,' ' telepathic,' 

 ' spiritistic,' etc. Professor Scudder happens to be 

 so constituted, in relation to cats, that the feline 

 biogen, impinging upon the Scudderian, immediately 

 makes him think of cats, transfers his thought from 

 all other objects of interest to cats, fixes his mind 

 upon cats, excites a violent 'psychic storm.' or 

 emotional disturbance, and results in the painful 

 physical derangement above noted. 



It would interest any student of psychics to ascer- 

 tain whether the eminent entomologist who furnishes 

 this case does not suffer in much the same way from 

 various other animals, as horses and cows. I venture 

 to surmise that such will be found to be the case. 



Any other explanation than I have given does not 

 occur to me as probable. A physicist or biologist, 



