ome person, but too indistinct to recognise much more of him than
the hands, appeared to shoot the arrow from the bow. The single
arrow was then accompanied by a flight of arrows from right to left,
which completely occupied the field of vision. These changed into
falling stars, then into flakes of a heavy snowstorm; the ground
gradually appeared as a sheet of snow where previously there had
been vacant space. Then a well-known rectory, fish-ponds, walls, etc.,
all covered with snow, came into view most vividly and clearly
defined. This somehow suggested another view, impressed on his mind
in childhood, of a spring morning, brilliant sun, and a bed of red
tulips: the tulips gradually vanished except one, which appeared now
to be isolated and to stand in the usual point of sight. It was a
single tulip, but became double. The petals then fell off rapidly in
a continuous series until there was nothing left but the pistil
(3), but (as is almost invariably the case with his objects) that
part was greatly exaggerated. The stigmas then changed into three
branching brown horns (4); then into a knob (5), while the stalk
changed into a stick. A slight bend in it seems to have suggested a
centre-bit (6); this passed into a sort of pin passing through a
metal plate (7), this again into a lock (8), and afterwards into a
nondescript shape (9), distantly suggestive of the original cross-bow.
Here Mr. Henslow endeavoured to force his will upon the visions, and
to reproduce the cross-bow, but the first attempt was an utter
failure. The figure changed into a leather strap with loops (10), but
while he still endeavoured to change it into a bow the strap broke,
the two ends were separated, but it happened that an imaginary
string connected them (11). This was the first concession of his
automatic chain of thoughts to his will. By a continued effort the
bow came (12), and then no difficulty was felt in converting it into
the cross-bow, and thus returning to the starting-point. Fig. 71.
Mr. Henslow writes:--

"Though I can usually summon up any object thought of, it not only
is somewhat different from the real thing, but it rapidly changes.
The changes are in many cases clearly due to a suggestiveness in the
article of something else, but not always so, as in some cases
hereafter described. It is not at ail necessary to think of any
particular object at first, as something is sure to come
spontaneously within a minute or two. Some object ha