WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



verv circumstance insists that it shall not be con- 

 sidered an unvarying, 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, 

 I mean, of preserving a straight course, once ascer- 

 tained, which sense some may prefer to speak of 

 as an " instinct " — the homing faculty of the hom- 

 ing-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 spiral, and, after circling 

 about a moment, shoot homeward "in a bee-line." 

 Evidently he has "got his bearings.'' Had you 

 watched him the first time he ever left his hive 

 you would have observed precisely similar conduct 

 to acquaint himself with the surroundings. 



How a bird like the albatross, the man-of-war- 

 hawk, or the petrel, swinging on tireless pinions 

 in apparently aimless flight over the tossing and 

 objectless ocean, suddenly rouses its reserve of 

 strength to traverse in a day or two the hundreds 

 of miles between it and the rock^'^ shores where it 

 builds its nest, or how it finds the lone islet which 



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