HOW ANIMALS GET HOME. 203 
dozen miles, the final stage of a match-flight of five hun- 
dred miles will be more than one hundred. The country 
has been seen but once, yet the bird remembers it, and not 
only for the three or four days of a match, but for months. 
In June, 1877, birds trained from Bath to London were 
twice flown. On June 11th of 1878 they repeated the 
trip at good speed. Such feats are not uncommon with 
Belgian birds—the best of. all 
eral authenticated instances of their going off-handed from 
and there have been sev- 
England to Belgium after having been kept in confinement 
many months. But the homing intelligence of pigeons is 
subject to much irregularity of action, and this very cir- 
cumstance insists that it shall not be considered an unvary- 
ing, unreasoning instinct. 
Enough has now been said, perhaps, to enable one to see 
that, however much the bird may be aided by an acute 
sense of direction—a capability, | mean, of preserving a 
straight course, once ascertained, which sense some may 
prefer to speak of as an “instinct”? —the homing faculty 
of le voyageur pigeon is the result of education, and is not 
a matter of intuition at all. 
The bee pursues a truly similar course. When he is 
loaded with nectar, you will note him cease humming about 
the heads of the flowers and spring up in a swift, vertical 
