ANIMALS’ PREMONITIONS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 July 1938, Page 9

ANIMALS’ PREMONITIONS

SOME ANALOGOUS FACTS. FOREBODINGS OF DISASTER. Quite recently when two monks in the Great Saint Bernard monastery wanted to take their usual walk after mass with their dogs, the dogs refused to go. Ordinarily the dogs looked forward to the walk, and their obstinate refusal to go outdoors disturbed the monks. However, it was not long before they learnt the reason: an hour later an avalanche, the like of which had not been seen for twenty years, rolled down on the monastery, breaking the windows and pushing in the doors. If the men and their dogs had been outside, they would undoubtedly have been crushed and buried by the avalanche. This is not an unusual occurrence, writes Jean Dorsenne in the “Gringoire,” Paris. Animals have presentiments of natural phenomena which humans do not have. We know that birds ordinarily foresee storms and fly to places of refuge; sea-gulls fly to shore when a storm is brewing. Even ordinary rain is presaged by animals: swallows fly close to the earth, crows caw and fly low, and snails drag along the ground. Before the eruption of Mount Pelee which destroyed Saint-Pierre, Martinique, the various animals which swarm the island were prey to a strange terror. There is nothing mysterious in these forebodings, for there are even many examples of horses and cows, which are not supposed to have “psychic” qualities, but who show that they have sensed in advance the coming of an avalanche.

It is quite normal that animals, whose senses are more subtle than ours, should perceive signs which escape us. On the evening of the fire in the Turin Opera House, the artists noted a strange phenomenon. That evening several goats and chickens had to appear on the stage, but contrary to their custom, they were prey to a fright which nothing seemed to warrant. The chicken fell from its perch and the goat almost chocked itself. A few hours after the performance, the fire broke out. Perhaps it could have been averted, or checked, if the men had been able to understand the warnings of the animals.

Dogs seem to have more presentiments than other animals, probably because they are much closer to men than are the others.

Mrs Crowe, in her book, “The Obscure Aspects of Nature,” quotes the case of an English landowner who lived in the country during a period of political disturbances. One day his favourite dog became very uneasy, got up, and tried to pull him outside. Intrigued the man let himself be led to the edge of the park. The dog forced him to hide behind a thicket and stay there for an hour without moving; then he brought his master home. The latter found his family very upset, for soldiers had come to arrest him and searched the house thoroughly. If it had not been for his dog’s warning, the man would have been taken to the city and imprisoned. Everybody has heard of dogs who “howl at death.” This is not a legend. The animal “psyche,” as Professor Ernesto Bozzano says, has a mysterious faculty: domestic animals can sometimes foresee the death of one of their household, and- they announce it with characteristic growling and barking. The Germans attribute this same quality to goats, and even today the Danish and Scotch peasants have the same belief.

From hundreds of analogous facts which Mr Bozzano has gathered in his “Metaphysical Manifestations Among Animals,” we shall quote one reported by Mme. Carita Borderieux, present editor of “Psychica”:— “Mr Marcel Mangin, the painter and psychiatrist who died in 1915, had a dog endowed with the faculty of foreseeing the death of members of his family. Even before the person became ill, the animal would begin to howl in a strange fashion, so that the family finally noticed this forecast and would become alarmed by it. Now, Mr Mangin died suddenly from an embolism. The preceding day, when there was nothing at all to suggest his approaching death, the dog began to growl in his significant fashion. “Whatever can the dog mean?” wondered Mr and Mrs Mangin.

“The next day the painter was dead.”

The case is also quoted of a cat which had a strange foreboding of his master’s death. The little animal had been given to his neighbours, and never tried to return to its first home. Two years later, its first master died, and you may imagine how surprised his family was to see the poor cat in the house that day. They tried to chase it out, but the cat went right up to its former master’s room where it found the corpse. It stayed there for a few minutes and then went away, never to return again. Such facts, the truth of which cannot be doubted, throw a very touching light on the soul of animals. Man has never tried to understand his inferior brothers; undoubtedly he would derive much benefit, if he were a little more comprehending.