ANIMAL TELEPATHY.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18302, 9 February 1925, Page 7

ANIMAL TELEPATHY.

The recent experiments in telepathy made by Professor Gilbert Murray at Woking have called attention to the fact that*, in some cases human jninds can communicate without speech or outward sign (writes Christopher Beck in the London "Daily Mail"). Professor Murray himself suggests the possibility of vibration from one human body to another, or of currents between two minds.

Howover this may be, naturalists have long been aware that something of the same sort, only more distinct, exists in the animal world.

Some years ago Professor C. V. Riley made some experiments which prove the power of insects to communicate at great distances by means quite beyond our present knowledge or comprehension. The professor had two ailanthus trees in his garden, and he procured from Japan some eggs of the ailanthus silk worm, of which a few hatched out. One. of thei female moths lie plaoed in a tiny wicker cage in one of the ailanthus trees; On the same evening; he took a male moth to a distance of a mile and a half, and then let it loose, having first tied a tiny silk thread around its abdomen for. purposes of identification. His idea was to find whether the two insects would come together, for the purpose of mating, they being the only two of their species at liberty, within hundreds of miles. Sure enough next morning. the male was found dinging to the outside of the cage containing the female. Most of us have watched the vast flocks of starlings which are so common a sight in England during the winter months, and, watching them, must have been struck by the extraordinary unanimity of their flight. Even more wonderful are the evolutions of a flock of golden plover, in which every one of several hundred birds makes the same turn or movement at precisely the same instant. More marvellous-still is It to observe the manoeuvres of a shoal of porpoise. These.fish are very fond of swimming in large numbers in front of a steamer, and, as a rule, form themselves into a wedge, keeping station as perfectly as any • thoroughly drilled battalion. At some signal, incomprehensible to the watcher, each member of the shoal suddenly swings off, half to right, half to left, and speeds back, making a complete circuit of the vessel and stations again exactly as before.