Some of the most remarkable of recorded instances of this form of psychometry known to the Western world are those related in the works of a geologist named Denton, who some fifty years ago conducted a series of investigations into the phenomena of psychometry.  His recorded experiments fill several volumes.  Being a geologist, he was able to select the best subjects for the experiments, and also to verify and decide upon the accuracy of the reports given by the psychometrists.  His wife, herself, was a gifted psychometrist, and it has been said of her, by good authority, that “she is able, by putting a piece of matter (whatever be its nature) to her head, to see, either with her eyes closed or open, all that the piece of matter, figuratively speaking, ever saw, heard, or experienced.”  The following examples will give a good idea of the Denton experiments, which are typical of this class of psychometry.

Dr. Denton gave the psychometrist a small fragment broken from a large meteorite.  She held it to her head, and reported:  “This is curious.  There is nothing at all to be seen.  I feel as if I were in the air.  No, not in the air either, but in nothing, no place.  I am utterly unable to describe it; it seems high, however I feel as though I were rising, and my eyes are carried upwards; but I look around in vain; there is nothing to be seen.  I see clouds, now, but nothing else.  They are so close to me that I seem to be in them.  My head, and neck and eyes are affected.  My eyes are carried up, and I cannot roll them down.  Now the clouds appear lighter and lighter, and look as though the sunlight would burst through them.  As the clouds separate, I can see a star or two, and then the moon instead of the sun.  The moon seems near, and looks coarse and rough, and paler and larger in size than I ever saw it before.  What a strange feeling comes over me!  It appears as if I were going right to the moon, and it looks as if the moon were coming to me.  It affects me terribly.”

Dr. Denton adds:  “She was too much affected to continue the experiment longer.  Had this aerolite at some period of its history, come within the sphere of the moon’s attraction, and had its velocity so increased that its augmented centrifugal force had carried it off into space again, whence, drawn by the superior attractive force of the earth, it had fallen and ended its career forever?”

At another time, Dr. Denton tested the psychometrist with a whalebone walking cane.  She supposed it to be wood, but when she began to report her psychic impressions, they came as follows:  “I feel as though I were a monster.  There is nothing of a tree about it, and it is useless for me to go further.  I feel like vomiting.  Now I want to plunge into the water.  I believe that I am going to have a fit.  My jaws are large enough to take down a house at a gulp.  I now know what this is—­it is whalebone.  I see the inside of the whale’s mouth.  It has no teeth.  It has a slimy look, but I only get a glimpse of it.  Now, I see the whole animal.  What an awful looking creature.”