A PREFACE AND AN APOLOGY . 
brought back to the confcioufnefs of a natural world and 
material things by the feeling of a material prefence about 
me; and one objedt invariably, and always the one objedt, 
at fuch times met my abftraded gaze— 
A Dragon-fly ! 
What I thought or how I felt when this firft happened I 
cannot now tell. One never notes particularly the firft link 
in the chain : it is only when the feparated and detached 
links fallen themfelves together and become a chain that 
human obfervation is fufficiently arrefted to note and draw 
conclufions. Naturally I looked at the creature—but only 
vaguely : I really couldn’t have told at the moment why I 
looked at it: I didn’t know myfelf: and when I did it was 
a—difappointing look, for the flafti of its wings was like the 
lightnings at play in the clouds: I could fee the flafh, but 
with no chance to ftudy it: and my defire was to underftand 
the mechanical 7 novements of wings! So if I did paufe to 
look at the creature it was to only look away again and 
think no more of it: until a like occurrence again took 
place, when the fame procefs of looking at, and looking 
away, and forgetting, would be gone through with as 
before ; but with apparently no pradtical refults of any mo¬ 
ment whatever. Thefe things occurred conftantly during 
a period of years, but with no greater effedt on my mind than 
to make me regard the coincidences as peculiar and curious. 
But when the fame thing again took place on my return to 
America, and with the fame regularity (though poftibly not 
