[To TUE EDITOR OP TDB esezerieroien Sia,—In support of Mr.
Engleheart's contention that people may see but fail to interpret aright, permit me to give a most dramatic case, which, while illustrating the point, has a wider interest. Mr. N. Chevalier, the well-known artist who accom- panied the late Duke of Edinburgh on many of his travels, was once going from Dunedin to Lyttelton, New Zealand, by steamer. Anxious to catch the earliest glimpse of the coast, he went on deck at dawn, and was alarmed to see that the vessel was heading straight on to the land. Calling the officer's attention to the feet, he was told that it was only a fog-bank. The artist maintained his point, but the second officer looked and confirmed his mate. The artist then said:
"Well, gentlemen, I will back my artist's eye against yOUr sailor's eye, and I say that what you mistake for a fog-bank is a low range of hills, and there is a range of mountains appearing above them." But he was only laughed at, until the captain coming on deck found, in the growing light, that the artist was right and the seamen wrong. The vessel was out of its course, and there was only just time to avert disaster. The helmsman was dismissed in disgrace, and the course given to the new steersman; but the vessel's head still pointed landwards,—the compass was all wrong. The cause was discovered later. A commercial traveller had brought a box of magnets on board and deposited them in a stern cabin, causing what might have been a fatal deflection of the compass. To return to the question of interpretation. The artist was dealing with the appearances which his eye was trained to see and his mind to interpret. A speck on the horizon might have remained a mere speck to him long after the sailors had interpreted the speck into a vessel of definite rig. There can be little doubt that the trainedeye is accompanied by a sort of mental seeing, an instinct out- running optics.-1 am, Sir, &c., E. WAKE COOK.
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