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138 least, nor did I know he was ill. Both my brother and my sister heard me say that I had seen him and believed he was dead, and they were equally astonished at hearing of his death on our return home. My uncle and I knew each other very little. In fact, he hardly knew me by sight, although he knew me well when I was a small child.

Miss Dove wrote to her brother on the 17th May,1892:

The uncle, it appears, was found dead in his bed on that morning, having died in the course of the night.

The grotesque character of the central incident in this narrative illustrates unmistakably the fundamental character of hallucinations. The mere fact that the curious vision did not strike the narrator at the time as odd, and did not make any emotional impression, is in itself a proof that he was not fully master of his faculties. A like partial dissociation of consciousness may no doubt be presumed to have existed in the case of Prince Duleep Singh's vision (No. 33) and in the case of Mr. Percy Kearne (No. 36). In order to appreciate their significance it is important to bear in mind that these apparitions are after all of the nature of dreams; and that the critical faculties of the percipient may in some cases be altogether in abeyance at the moment, however wide awake he may