I have frequently seen this thing, in my own country and in others, among poultry raisers.  The poultryman will think, to himself, “Now, I am going to get that black hen with the yellow legs—­that fat, clumsy one,” and he will move toward the flock slowly and with an air of unconcern.  But, lo! as soon as he gets near the creatures, that black hen will be seen edging her way to the outer circle of the flock, on the opposite side from the man.  When the man moves around to her side, she will be found to have plunged into the crowd, and it is hard to find her.  Sometimes she will actually try to sneak off, and conceal herself in some dark corner, or back of some large object.  Every poultryman will smile when this occurrence is mentioned to him—­he knows by experience that hens have a way of sensing what he has in his mind regarding them.

Moreover, as every farmer knows, the crow family has a most uncanny way of sensing the intentions of the farmer who is trying to destroy them, and shows great sagacity in defeating those intentions.  But, while the crow is a very intelligent bird—­one of the wisest of the bird family, in fact—­it obtains its knowledge of what is in the mind of the man not alone from “figuring on his intentions,” but rather from that instinctive sensing of his mental states.  The hen, as all know, is a very stupid bird, showing but little intelligent activity.  But, nevertheless, she is very quick about sensing the poultryman’s designs on her, though generally very stupid about planning out a skillful escape.

Every owner of dogs, cats and horses, has had many opportunities for observing the manifestation of this sense on the part of those animals.  Every dog feels the emotional states of his owner, and others.  The horse knows when his owner seeks to throw the halter over his neck, or when, on the contrary, he is merely walking through the field.  Cats sense their owners’ feelings and thoughts, and often resent them.  Of course, the lower animals can sense merely elementary mental states, and generally only emotional states, as their minds are not developed so as to interpret the more complex mental states.  Primitive men likewise almost instinctively sense the feelings and designs of other men.  They do not reason the thing out, but rather merely “feel” the ideas and designs of the others.  The women of the lower races are more adept in interpreting these sense reports than are the men.  Women are more sensitive, as a rule, than are men—­on any point on the scale of development.

When we come to consider ordinary telepathy in the case of men of civilized countries, we find a more complex state of affairs.  While civilized man, as a whole, has lost some of the quick telepathic perception of the lower races, he has, in some exceptional cases, acquired a faculty of receiving and interpreting more complex thought-forms and mental states.  The investigations of the Society for Psychical Research,