COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 29 
Among wholly unsolved problems ranks the nattre 
of the mental processes by which many different tribes 
of animals find their way back to the place from which 
they have been removed, when the distances involved 
are great, and often when they have never travelled so 
much as once the way by which they return. 
Akin to this, possibly, though perhaps quite different, 
is the question as to the nature of the faculties by 
which animals are enabled to migrate. “How a small 
and tender bird, coming from Africa or Spain, after 
traversing the sea, finds the very same hedgerow in 
the middle of England, where it made its nest last 
season, is truly marvellous” (Darwin). We are much 
in need of more facts in regard to the migrations of 
animals; and it is hoped that the systematic work 
recently inaugurated by the American Ornithological 
Association may lead to useful results in this field. 
With regard to the so-called “homing instinct,” it has 
been noticed that savage or semi-savage man possesses 
a power of finding his way in the trackless forest by 
more accurate observation than that of which the 
civilised man seems capable, While this throws light 
upon the case of the lower animals, it does but very 
inadequately explain it. It may turn out that both of 
these puzzles are susceptible of simple explanation ; 
but at present they strike me as rather belonging to 
that class of psychic phenomena, the meaning of which 
can be but inadequately understood by man, owing to 
his not possessing the requisite faculties or those 
faculties in sufficiently powerful or acute development. 
The performances of a Shakespeare and Scott in litera- 
ture, or a Beethoven in music, to the mass of men, 
must be but imperfectly understood in any proper 
sense of realisation. Probably these sons of genius 
could have given little account of the “manner of it” 
themselves. We might hesitate to call such faculties 
