July 1892 - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

Spiritual Gifts. 179
some substance which the holder could not possibly see:
He then asked of each person what impression the said
package produced in respect to its contents. To his surprise
and satisfaction, it was found that ninety of the
experimenters out of the hundred and sixty suceeeded in
describing correctly, and that purely through the sense of
touch, what the package contained. To those who know
the learned professor as well as I or any of his American
cotemporaries do, it would be needless to say that his
experiments in this newly-c;liscovered realm of sensuous
perception were continuous and persevering.
Finding that the power of sensing objects by the touch
was more universal than he had at first deemed it, also
that there was a much wider range of perception developed
by these experiments than he had at first realized, Dr.
Buchanan felt justified in giving wide-spread publicity to
his discoveries, ranging the peculiar form of sensitiveness
they revealed under the title of "Psychometry," or soulmetre,
a term now identical with the power of discerning
character, whether through animate or inanimate objects,
by the sense of touch. Following on the lines of experiment
produced by Dr. Buchanan, a large number of
persons were found to be endowed with the psychometric
gift, and numerous successful experiments added their
testimony to the new field of discovery. Amongst
these, one of the most prominent workers, and the one
who has done the most to illustrate and popularize Dr.
Buchanan's discovery was the eminent geologist and
spiritual lecturer, William Denton. This gentleman having
found in his gifted wife, sister, and one of his own
sons the most striking evidences of psychometrical
power, pursued his experiments for some years under the
most favourable conditions.
Continuing his researches in his far and wiele travels,'
and finding amongst several hundreds of persons with