Mr. Rider Haggard publishes in tha Row of Thursday a
very remarkable story. He says that on the night of July 10th he suffered from a painful nightmare, and while still half conscious, dreamed that a favourite retriever was dying, that he himself was close to it, and that the dog was endeavouring to tell him the facts. The body of the retriever was found in the Waveney three days after, and investigation seems to prove beyond doubt that it was killed on the 10th by an excursion train from Ditchingham about three hours before Mr. Haggard's dream. The only grave doubt about the facts—as' to most of which Mr. Haggard produces full corroborative evidence—is as to the time, for if the dog was killed later, the incident is reduced to a dream which turned out true, an experience by no means unusual. Mr. Haggard, however, has satisfied himself as to the manner and time of death, and seems convinced that the dog did, either at the moment of death or after it, succeed in telling his master what had happened. If the communication was made at the moment, then we have an instance of telepathy between a dog and a human being absolutely without precedent; while if it was made after death, Mr. Haggard suggests that "some non-bodily but surviving part of the life or of the spirit of the dog reproduced those things in his mind." Is there not another solution of the mystery which has not occurred to Mr. Haggard,—namely, that his own 'spirit travelled in sleep to the dying dog, and that he really saw the facts be reports without any communication from the animal ? There is a good deal of evidence for that kind of unconscious travelling, none for the existence of animals after death.
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