Page:The Naturalisation of the Supernatural.pdf/108

88 been made before news of the death in six cases only. In only one—the narrative just cited—has the note actually been preserved, and this, as has been shown, in an ambiguous form. There are altogether 1942 hallucinations reported in the Census enquiry, and in only forty-nine of these, i. e., 2.5 per cent, is any record (diary or letter) said to have been written within twenty-four hours of the occurrence. We can hardly expect therefore that a note of a dream will be made at the time, unless the percipient should happen to be specially interested in the subject.

In the following case also the correspondence between the dream and the event appears to have been very detailed; though in one important particular, the identity of the person in the water, the dreamer was at fault.

No. 24. From

May 8th, 1894.

On Sunday, May 5th. 1894, my sister and I were boating on the river Derwent, in Yorkshire (near Kirkham Abbey), with a party of friends in a small steam launch. Between 3 and 4 o'clock in the afternoon, we had all landed to gather cowslips in the fields, and on returning to the boat, for some reason the usual plank for landing was not in position, and we jumped in turn from the bank on to the flat end of the boat. I was the last, and in jumping missed my footing and slipped