28 STUDIES IN BIRD-MIGRATION 



tutored reason, that enables these creatures to find 

 their way, chiefly under water, several hundred miles, 

 to their place of usual resort, as each succeeding 

 spring season of the year arrives." On another occasion, 

 Ross observed two penguins when more than a thousand 

 miles from the nearest land i^loc. ciL, vol. i. p. 227-8). 



The erratic wanderings of migratory birds, resulting 

 in their appearance in countries far removed from their 

 accustomed haunts, and off the routes followed to reach 

 them, are in many cases to be attributed to their failure, 

 from some cause or other, to inherit unimpaired this 

 all-important faculty of unconscious orientation. The 

 incentive to migrate, it must be admitted, is strong 

 within them, or they would never occur in places so 

 remote from the domains of their respective species. 



Such facts as these most effectually dispose of the 

 contentions advanced in favour of sight, individual 

 memory, knowledge of landmarks, the aid derived from 

 flying at a great height, and of experience imparted to 

 the young by parental guidance. All these would be 

 of no avail to a party of Penguins seeking their accus- 

 tomed summer quarters when surrounded on all sides 

 by hundreds of miles of the pathless, featureless ocean. 

 They compel us to fall back upon a special sense of 

 direction unconsciously exercised : no other explanation 

 seems possible. 



Some very remarkable experiments have recently 

 been carried out by American ornithologists, which also 

 go far to prove that birds are endowed with a 

 "mysterious sense of direction." The following is 

 quoted from Mr Chapman's article in Bird Lore (1908, 

 p. 134) on experiments carried out by the Department 

 of Marine Biology of the Carnegie Institution. From 



