A ZOOLOGICAL ENIGMA. 363 



tan perhaps to remote oases and mountain-regions, hundreds of miles 

 away. She-wolves that must have come from Lithuania or eastern 

 Poland have been shot in northern Germany. Under such circum- 

 stances topographical instinct becomes a matter of vital importance, 

 and where there is a want Nature always finds the means of supplying 

 it. All our senses are comparatively rudimental. Every organ holds 

 the possibility of an infinite functional development. In man the 

 ability of distinguishing black from white has been perfected into the 

 art of reading, the faculty of identifying at a single glance half a hun- 

 dred multiform black marks on a white background. By constant 

 practice and hereditary transmission of cumulative acquirements, the 

 ability of remembering the bifurcation of a ravine, or of smelling a 

 muskrat across a creek, was thus, perhaps, developed into the art of 

 recollecting the ramifications of a vast mountain system or of scenting 

 the atmosphere of a given locality athwart a continent. 



Similar causes have produced similar results in other species of 

 animals, for the sense of orientation is not confined to the genus Cams. 

 Horses and goats show traces of the same talent ; pigeons, crows, 

 falcons, and all migratory birds possess it in a transcendent degree ; 

 also all migratory fishes and reptiles, shad, sturgeons, tunny fish, and 

 marine tortoises. Now, there is no doubt that in most birds the olfac- 

 tory sense is very feebly developed. Eagles, falcons, and sparrow- 

 hawks hunt by sight, and even condors and other vultures have been 

 decoyed with sham carcasses, hides stuffed with straw or stones. 

 Pigeons and chickens are very sharp-sighted and awaken at the slight- 

 est sound, but a noiseless thief can surprise them in any dark night 

 the sense of smell does not warn them. Von Haller went so far as to 

 assert that birds can not smell at all, and that their nostrils are only 

 respiratory apertures. 



How, then, could carrier-pigeons find their way from Cleveland to 

 Philadelphia? Belgian pigeons have carried letters from Paris to 

 Namur and from Geneva to Brussels, in fourteen and twenty-two 

 hours; and a gerfalcon, which Henri Quatre presented to the com- 

 mander of a Mediterranean brigantine, returned from Tangier to Paris 

 in a single day. Did they steer by sight ? However telescopic their 

 vision might be, the incurvation of the globe would preclude the idea. 



The bird-of-passage instinct is much less wonderful. Cranes and 

 geese might steer due south by the aid of the noontide sun, and re- 

 turn by inverting the process till they come in sight of familiar scenery. 

 A Northampton swallow, flying at the rate of two miles a minute, 

 could well afford to roam at random over the State of Massachusetts 

 till she came in sight of the Holyoke range and Mount Tom. A 

 sturgeon, too, might find his spawning-grounds at the mouth of the 

 Ottawa by following the St. Lawrence upward till he reached the 

 Chaudiere of St. Anne. In short, the art of retracing a self-chosen 

 route appears much less enigmatical. But even reptiles have crossed 



