We give below some account of the events, as related in the Times.

From the Times, 30th March, 1889 (Saturday):-

"A Channel Packet Missing.

"Up to twelve o'clock last night the mail and passenger steamer which left Ostend for Dover at ten o'clock yesterday morning, had not arrived. The vessel (the Comtesse de Flandre) was due at Dover at 2.30. There was a slight fog close in shore but the Calais boat, which arrived last evening, reported that it was tolerably clear out in the Channel. Great anxiety was felt at Dover last night as to the steamer s safety, and signal guns were fired at given intervals."

In the second edition of the Times, same date as above, the following appears:-

"Foundering of an Ostend Mail Steamer (from

Lloyd's).

"Lloyd's agent at Ostend telegraphs, under date to-day 7.30 a.m., that the mail boats the Princess Henriette, from Dover, and the Comtesse de Flandre, from Ostend, were in collision yesterday. The Comtesse de Flandre sank, and all of the crew, including captain and mate, and three passengers, were drowned. Mails lost.

"The Comtesse de Flandre was a steamer of 500 tons gross, and left Ostend yesterday morning with mails and passengers for England."

In the Timesy Monday, 1st April, 1889, a fuller account appears, with names of victims, narratives of survivors, etc. Mr. Algernon Osborn, one of the saved, gives the time of the collision as half-past one.

And so enough, perhaps, of these eventful dreams. We will pass to a slightly more serious class of premonitory dream, where an accident has been averted through the dreamer remembering his dream at the crucial moment and not doing what he would naturally have done if he had not remembered his dream. The first instance we quote of the snake is perhaps the least conclusive, as it seems to be only Mr. Kinsolvings theory that he would have trodden on the snake if he had not been warned in his dream. However, it is a good instance of a premonitory dream, whether the warning was useful or not:-

Dr. Kinsolving1 of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Epiphany, Philadelphia, writes as follows to Dr.

Hodgson:-

"2,016 Locust Street, "Philadelphia, 14th October, 1891.

"My Dear Sir,

"The dream was this. I seemed to be in woods, back of the hotel at Capon Springs, W. Va, when I came across a rattlesnake which, when killed, had two black - looking rattles and a peculiar projection of bone from the tail, while the skin was unusually light in colour. The impression of the snake was very distinct and vivid before my mind's eye when I awoke in the morning, but I did not mention the dream to any one, though I was in the act of telling my wife while dressing, but refrained from so doing because I was in the habit of taking long walks in the mountains, and I did not wish to make her nervous by the suggestion of snakes.

"After breakfast I started with my brother along the back of the great north mountain, and when about twelve miles from the hotel we decided to go down out of the mountain into the road and return home. As we started down the side of the mountain I suddenly became vividly conscious of my dream, to such an extent as to startle me and to put me on the alert I was walking rapidly and had gone thirty steps when 1 came on a snake coiled and ready to strike. My foot was in the air, and had I finished my step I would have trodden upon the snake. I threw myself to one side and fell heavily on the ground. I recovered myself at once and killed the snake with the assistance of my brother, and found it to be the same snake in every particular with the one I had had in my mind's eye. The same size, colour, and peculiar malformation of the tail.

1 Vol. xi., part xxix., of Proceedings S. P. R.

"It is my belief that my dream prevented me from treading on the snake, but I have no theory on the subject, and get considerably mixed and muddled when I try to think on the line of such abnormal experiences.

"G. H. Kinsolving."

" Christ Church, Clinton and Harrison Streets,

"323 Clinton Street, Brooklyn, N.Y.

"19thApril, 1892.

"Mr. Richard Hodgson. "My Dear Sir,

"My brother, the Rev. George H. Kinsolving of Philadelphia has enclosed me your request for my recollection of his premonitory dream last summer at Capon Springs. Constant occupation during the season just ended is my apology for a somewhat tardy compliance with that request. The circumstances as I remember them were these:-

"We started, he and I together, off from the Springs Hotel just after breakfast to go over the mountain to Rock Rock Springs. Our first stop was on the crest of the North Mountain, and near it we had some conversation with two boys who were out huckleberrying. I asked them about their experience with rattlesnakes, and they replied they had killed several during the season. Later, my brother and I were clambering up a steep rough bushy cliff, and as he was in front I said "You had better look out for rattlesnakes. This is a very snaky sort of place.' At neither of these references to the subject of the snakes did my brother seem to be reminded of or to make any allusion to his dream of the night before of which he had not then told me "After walking some way beyond this we missed our trail and found ourselves descending the mountain. Suddenly my brother, who was at my side and a little in front, threw his body back and said, ' My! I like to have stepped on that fellow'! I think I caught him by the shoulder as, with one foot raised just over the reptile which was coiled under some bushes and a bit of brushwood, he reeled backward.

Then as we closed in upon the snake and delivered our first stones, my brother, catching sight of the tail, said, ' That is strange! I will tell you something remarkable about that snake in a moment.' Then when we had killed the snake, before I noticed anything remarkable about it - when to me it was like Jim Smiley's frog, 'just like any other frog' - my brother pointed to the fact that it had but one rattle on its tail, and proceeded to tell me his dream. He said that the night before he dreamed that he came up in front of the Springs Hotel as a party of boys were in the act of killing a snake. Bending over the reptile he said 'Why boys, that snake has a diseased tail'. And on examination it appeared a very singular, defective tail. At the time of his narrow escape from being bitten (for the reptile had thrown back his head to strike when discovered), he said the dream had suddenly come into his mind. I noticed a pause and losing the thread of the argument in which we were engaged, and this made me look towards him at the moment.