Many animals show a singular Prescience of certain classes of coming events. Thus, certain birds and other animals appear to know when a given district or country is becoming infected with epidemic disease, in which case they leave or avoid the infected district or country till the epidemic has disappeared. This has been especially noticed prior to outbreaks of such diseases as cholera in man. In the autumn of 1874 a paragraph taken from a German journal called the "Jardin Zoologique," and relating to supposed or alleged foresight in birds, went the round of British medical journals and newspapers. It stated that "a few days previous to the terrible ravages of cholera in Galicia in 1872 all the sparrows suddenly quitted the town of Przemysl, and not a single bird returned until the end of November, when the disease had entirely disappeared. The same circumstance was remarked in Munich and Nuremberg. During the attacks of cholera at St. Petersburgh and Riga in 1848, in Western Prussia in 1849, and in Hanover in 1850, every swallow and sparrow forsook the towns, and remained absent until the eradication of the scourge." Other illustrations, varying greatly in their character of apparent foresight or prescience in the lower animals, are to be found: 1. The discovery of a master's thoughts or intentions by the dog or cat, including, for instance, the discovery of intended murders or robberies. 2. The discovery of water-supply in the desert, steppe, or prairie by horses, cattle, camels, frogs, baboons, as well as by the blacks in the central deserts of Australia. Here, again, the so-called instinct of the lower animals or savage accomplishes that which too often baffles all the intelligence of the white man. 3. The coming of ships long before they are sighted by man. Thus, long before a ship is sighted off the coast of Tahiti she is signalled by the simultaneous crowing of all the cocks in the island. It is next to impossible to attribute the fact to a fortuitous coincidence, as it reproduces itself regularly without any exception,-so regularly, indeed, that pilots, both French and native, act upon this species of signal by putting off to sea in their canoes in search of the coming vessels. 4. Premonitions or presentiments of death, danger, or misfortune, especially by the dog, cat, and horse. These premonitions include a forewarning of coming earthquakes on the part of the ox, sheep, and horse, which take alarm and betake themselves to flight and safety. *

Many animals show the presence of various sorts of prescient instinct, thus proving that a faculty which many suppose to be superhuman or spiritual is possessed in nearly all its phases by some species of animals. This should teach us that in this phase of existence every faculty is material and exhibited by means of a material medium, viz., by our senses.

In all ages of the world there have been sibyls, prophets, diviners, seers, and in these days they are termed clairvoyants, spirit-mediums, etc. Some are pretenders and impostors. Others doubtless have the gift of seeing and foreseeing what is hid from the less-developed senses of the majority. It is the same with all mental gifts. Some have the faculties of Music, Number, Color, or Construction in a wonderful degree, while others are greatly lacking in these directions. We are not to infer that because some are deficient in Prescience all others are equally so. This method of

*Mind in the Lower Animals, J. L. Lindsay, pp. 152, 153.

thinking is illogical, and not warranted by fact. It would be just as reasonable for a man who could not distinguish one tune from another, and who disliked music, to say that because he could not sing no one else could, and that all the so-called music was nothing but noise. I have known persons so destitute of musical ears as to hate music, and to consider all singing "squalling" and pianoplaying "banging," yet this was not proof of the absence of melody in others nor want of harmony in the science and art of music.

While recognizing the fact of the existence of the faculty of Prescience we should be on our guard against the pretensions of would-be diviners, for all obscure phases of character present a wide field for the operations of pretenders. It is just the same in the remedial science; there are quacks and pretenders without number. Were it not for the aid of scientific physiognomy they might continue to pass for true physicians; but science, which is unveiling, discovering, and enlightening us in every direction, will strip the mask off these charlatans, and the full light of its brilliancy will unfold the character of every one of them to our gaze.

dependent upon the action of the Architectural division of the face, 15-21