A PREFACE AND AN APOLOGT. 
7 
continent, making itfelf known to me under circumftances 
and in ways fo peculiar, that I was at length compelled to 
notice and conflder it. I obferved the creature at firft from 
fomething ftrange in the way it flew about me. I cannot 
fay that at the time I adually thought it was trying to 
attrad my attention, but it flew near me and around me in 
circles that were flgniflcant enough to make me look at 
it with a perception of fome obfervable difference from its 
ordinary flying : and this took place ufually at moments of 
deep thought. Walking as one does with his eyes wide 
open and looking at objeds about him, the phenomenon 
never happened. The infed, indeed, might have been as 
much about me then as at other times; but if fo, it was 
following its purfuits in its ordinary manner, and doing 
nothing to fpecially call my attention to it. Its peculiar 
movements, and thofe that forced me to look at it, invariably 
took place during certain conditions of my own mind 
and thought—the condition being one of intenfe and 
profound abftradion :—with the whole natural world fhut 
out from view: fuch moments of exiftence as one lives in 
a fpeculative world ; a world where a objedive fubjedives” 
are paramount. It was at thefe times, when the mind, 
ftrained to its utmoft in the effort to extrad from previoufly 
obferved phenomena in nature their fecret principles: to 
deted as it were the hair-fpring of fome fpiritual mecha- 
nifm coiled up within the world of things:—it was, I fay, 
at fuch moments of abftradion that I would fuddenly be 
