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Rh them in "Brand's Populair Antiquities") as they were received from the captain: He honestly confessed that he had like to have caught the contagion, and on seeing something move in a way so similar to that which an old friend used, and withal having a cap on so like that which he was wont to wear, verily thought there was more in the report than ho was at first willing to believe. A general panic diffused itself. He ordered the ship to be steered toward the object, but not a man would move the helm. Compelled to do this himself, he found on a nearer approach that the ridiculous cause of all their terror was part of a maintop, the remains of some wreck, floating before them. If he had really caught the contagion the evidence would have been complete; the Society for Psychical Research might make much of it, and it would be declared to be convincing proof of a future state. Dr. Tuke gives an instance of a general misapprehension of vision. At the conflagration in the Crystal Palace, in the winter of 1866-67, when the animals were destroyed by fire, it was supposed that the chimpanzee had succeeded in escaping from his cage. Men saw the unhappy animal holding to the roof and writhing in agony while trying to grasp one of the iron ribs. They watched its struggles with sickening dread—but there was no animal there. "It was a tattered piece of blind, so torn as to resemble, to the eye of fancy, the body, arms, and legs of an ape!"

When Brigham Young asserted that he saw the angel of the Lord from Ensign Point, making signs that this was the place where the great city and tabernacle of the Latter Day Saints should be established, Mormons surrounding him thought they beheld the angel, and nothing could shake their conviction of its reality. Mistakes of identity account for many apparitions. Resemblances between persons in no way related are