1895.] Psychology. 875 
On the whole, “The Psychic Factor” is written in a candid and 
scientific spirit, yet occasionally one finds traces of the theologian and 
instructor of youth which would be more in place elsewhere. We are 
hardly yet in a position to say that the phenomena of telepathy make 
divine inspiration “ no longer even an unlikely phenomenon;” but 
“one of the most feasible and natural of religious processes.” Nor can 
we point to the still more contested phenomena of “ lucidity ” as estab- 
lishing on the part of the Hebrew prophets a “ prophetic insight,” or 
as proving that they “surely saw visions and dreamed dreams,” that 
“the present and the future appeared to them as a shifting panorama.” 
The question of possibility is one thing and the question of fact 
another ; the possibility might be established and the fact remain highly 
improbable. And when, in the chapter on hallucination, we find the 
hallucinatory properties of opium used as a pretext for a diatribe 
upon tobacco, we feel that there is a form of zeal that is not edifying. 
The Baboon Switch Tender.—Some years ago a statement ap- 
peared in the newspapers that a baboon had been trained to open and 
close the switches on a South African railroad. The following extract 
from a letter from Klerksdorp, S. Africa, of March 31st, 1895, con- 
firms these accounts : 
* x * “you can state that until lately, when the nervous public 
made such a fuss it had to be stopped, a South African monkey, like 
those I wrote to you about from Mooit Gedaert, was tamed by a 
switchman just out of Maretsburg, our college town here, to turn 
switches for passing trains, etc. He would wait until the engine was 
in sight, then run and open the switch, jump on the cowcatcher, have a 
short ride, then jump back to turn it off again, but passengers grew so 
frightfully hysterical, especially the strangers, that it was stopped 
This is honestly true.’”—Joanus STUBBS. 
Change of Habit in a Parrot.—A letter addressed to Natural 
Science by M. S. Evans, Natal, S. Africa, calls attention to a change in 
the food habit of the parrots (Psittacus sp.) in the valley of the Upper 
Umkomanzi River. Until last year (1894) the parrots, which are 
quite common in the bush, had not foraged in the gardens and or- 
chards, when for the first time since the place had been settled by the 
Europeans—a matter of twenty-five years—they attacked the fruit. 
‘Their somewhat timid nature seemed quite altered, and they flew into 
the orchards in large numbers. They seemed unable to carry off the 
fruit alone, so broke the small branches below the joint, and were seen 
