SIDE IvIGHTS ON BIRDS 



believe is gaining ground. It is that there exists 

 in birds an occult power which may be denomi- 

 nated a food-finding sense, separate from and 

 additional to, the five senses commonly recognised. 

 If the principle of this theory be accepted the 

 necessity for any employment of either scent or 

 sight is almost done away with. . . It is 

 quite reasonable to think that birds may have 

 kept in a most efficient form something which 

 human beings either never had or which is now 

 lost to them. It is undeniable that a food-finding 

 sense exists in many insects (may it not be added 

 — a mate-finding sense in a much more lemarkable 

 degree?); this maybe taken as established, so why 

 not in birds, or at any rate, in some birds ? " 



The theory of an additional sense or senses 

 would also account for the extraordinary way in 

 which flocks of birds wheel in perfect unison 

 as though animated by a common spirit. Com- 

 mon action is ceitainly helped by gregarious 

 habit, but that every individual in a vast gathering 

 should be able to see and appreciate a source of 

 alarm at the same instant, and act with lightning- 

 like swiftness upon it is contrary to what we 

 know of the movements of any large bodies. 



We are inclined to believe that the ancient 

 occultists got near to the truth when they spoke 

 of a single spirit permeating the whole^a group- 

 soul, as it were, in action which causes the flock 

 for the time being to move as a single organiza- 

 tion, rather than as a mass of individual atoms, 

 each guided by its own will. 



What the precise nature of any additional sense 

 may be, it is of course impossible to say, although 

 experiments m telepathy and other occult matters 

 m.ay be of help, but by abandoning the theories 

 of sight, hearing, scent and so on when they can 

 reasonably be shown to be untenable, we may be 

 clearing the ground for newer observation. 



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