THE VISIONS OF SANE PERSONS. 519 



tain points towering peaks from fifteen to twenty thousand feet above 

 the level of the dark plain. 



The Mare Imbrium, also lying in the north quadrant, is the largest 

 of the dark ring-plains of the moon. The lunar Carpathian and Ap- 

 ennine ranges bound it on the south, the Caucasus and Alps on the 

 west, and on the north the lofty highlands of Plato and the Sinus Iri- 

 dum. It has a length of seven hundred and fifty miles, and a breadth 

 of six hundred and seventy-eight. 



One of the most wonderful and mysterious features of the moon, 

 and seen on the southern quadrant, is Tycho, the center of the princi- 

 pal streak system. From its mountain-walled plain issue streams of 

 radiance like rivers of silver ; some of these " rilles " flow for a length 

 of a thousand miles. The southern portion of the moon is a mass of 

 old craters, ring-plains, valleys, hills, and ridges ; with its radiant 

 streak system and diversity of formations it is the most interesting 

 part of the lunar surface. 



When completed, this series of paintings will present not only a 

 worn-out world in miniature, but, if one may credit the great astron- 

 omers of our day, the painted prophecy of the far-off future of our 

 own earth, when it shall have cooled off, and all the bustling, battling 

 throngs of humanity be as its own clay ! 



-- 



THE VISIONS OF SA:N"E PEESOISTS. 



By l^EANCIS GALTON. 



IN the course of some recent inquiries into visual memory, I was 

 greatly struck by the frequency of the replies in which my in- 

 formants described themselves as subject to "visions." Those of 

 whom I speak were sane and healthy, but were subject notwithstand- 

 ing to visual presentations, for which they could not often account, 

 and which in a few cases reached the level of hallucinations. This 

 unexpected prevalence of a visionary tendency, among persons who 

 form a part of ordinary society, seems to me suggestive and worthy 

 of being put on record. In a previous article * I spoke of the faculty 

 of summoning scenes at will, with more or less distinctness, before 

 the visual memory ; in this I shall speak of the tendency among 

 sane and healthy persons to see images flash unaccountably into 

 existence. 



Many of my facts are derived from personal friends of whose ac- 

 curacy I have no doubt. Another group comes from correspondents 

 who have written at length with much painstaking, and whose letters 



* See a previous article on " Mental Imagery," " Popular Science Monthly," vol. xviii, 

 p. 64. 



