Since then, various versions of the dream have found their way into scholarly analyses. In one version, cited by Carl Jung in ''The Psychology of Transference,'' Kekule discovered the benzene ring after dreaming of ''the Royal Marriage,'' the image of a dancing king and queen used by medieval alchemists as a symbol of conjunction. In another version, Kekule dreamed of a self-devouring snake alchemists of the 3d century A.D. devised to symbolize the underlying unity of nature. In others, the dream involved six snakes, or six monkeys linking hands and tails.

Dr. Wotiz has discovered that the monkey version was apparently first published in 1886, in a tongue-in-cheek ''professional'' journal. This parody, written in straight-faced scientific style, actually fooled some nonscientists, who later quoted passages from it in serious papers of their own, Dr. Wotiz said. Kekule himself may have been involved in the joke. Among other spoofs, the ''journal'' reports a fictitious scientific meeting at which a ''Mr. Aujust Kuleke'' presided and described a dream in which monkeys use their hands and feet ''to grasp and hang on to other objects.''

The real Kekule, Dr. Wotiz says, clearly never had a monkey dream. Tale of Frolicking Atoms

The first historical mention of the snake dream appears to have been by Kekule himself, in an extemporaneous speech at a benzene symposium in 1890. In this speech, Dr. Wotiz said, Kekule recounted a dream he had had in the winter of 1861-62 while dozing in front of a fire in Ghent, Belgium, where he was a professor of chemistry. The dream was that of the self-devouring snake, which, Kekule said, led him to the benzene ring.

In the same speech Kekule told of another earlier dream he had had, in 1854 or 1855, after falling into a reverie aboard a horse-drawn London bus. ''Lo,'' Kekule said, ''the atoms were gamboling before my eyes!'' He continued, ''I saw how the larger ones formed a chain, dragging the smaller ones after them but only at the ends of the chain.''

The latter dream, which Kekule said had inspired his discovery of the propensity of carbon to form straight chains, was the basis of Jung's reference to ''the Royal Marriage,'' Dr. Wotiz said.