10 HOMING AND RELATED ACTIVITIES OF BIRDS. 



until 1850 almost every army post and fort had its cote and was supplied with 

 pigeons from other military fortresses. Indeed, the French extended the use 

 of the homing pigeon to the field l)y equipping the cotes with wheels (traveling 

 cotes) and training the birds to return to these rolling habitations regardless 

 of their location. They further extended the use of the homing pigeon by 

 establishing cotes on board war vessels. The commercial value of the pigeon 

 post has been very great indeed. Practically all of the boards of trade in 

 the large cities of Europe were once supplied with homing pigeons. Their use 

 in obtaining advance information concerning crops, local insurrections, rumors 

 of war, etc., can hardly be overestimated. Newspapers likewise were supplied 

 with such pigeon posts. A rather lengthy dispatch could be sent, when it is 

 remembered that the message, after it was wi'itten, could be micro-photo- 

 graphed in such a way that 50,000 words could be contained on a paper which 

 had a weight of less than 0.5 gram. The dispatch could then be read under 

 the microscope l)y the receiver. 



The decline of the usefulness of the pigeon dates back to the establishment 

 of the telegrajjli and field telephone lines, and on sea to wireless telegraphy. 

 Even m the present European war, if reports may be trusted, the birds are 

 used to some extent in the scouting work of the balloon and aeroplane coips. 



Claparede* has given a very brief description of the theories of lioming and 

 of the problems in homing. The theories he classifies as follows: 



1. Magnetic Sense (Viguier-Caustier?).t 



2. Atmospheric Currents, Winds, etc. (Toussenel, Zioglcr?). 



"Ideas of the Atmosphere" (Thauzies?); Special Nasal Saisc (Cyon). 



3. Direction of the Sun, of Light (Romanes, Lubbock, Wasinann). 



4. Special Force (Fabre); Attraction of Purely Reflex Origin (Netter, Betho); Tropism 



(Loeb). 



5. Registratio7i of Detours (Darwin, L. Morgan); Contrepied (Rt-ynaud, P. Bonnifr). 



6. Points dcRcp'erc, Topographical Memory (Wallace, Romanes, Lubbock, Forel, Fabre, 



Wasniann, Yung, Bouvier, Marchal, Marehand, Buttel-Reepen, Peckham, 

 Rodcnbach, Ziegler). 



7. Durcl I'rrr.plinn of Goal (H:iclirt-S<>ui.!ft, Duchatol) ; Telepathy (Duoliatel). 



8. Cniiiplix l-h, iiiniiina Resliiiij iii„„i Inlrlligence (Cyon). 



9. llendilary Topographical Miiiiury (Kinusley, Parker and Newton). 



Claparede classifies the various problems iii homing as follows: 



Already [ ^- Perceptible. 



, ■; \ { II. ^^ licre landmarks are at hand. 



I Non-perceptible -j III. Witli no apparent landmarks 

 I at hand. 



I f IV. Perceptible. 



I Unknown ] f V. Where intermediary stimulations 



I [ Non-i3erce]itible \ are at hand. 



y I VI. With no intermediate excitations. 



♦Archives de Psychologic, ii, 1906, p. 133. 



fWhere an author is hard to classify an interrogation point is placed after his name. In many 

 cases a given author makes use of more than one theory to account for the different phenomena 

 of homing. Many authors whose names appear in the above Hsts are not again mentioned in 

 this report. Reference to their work m.ay be found in Claparede's bibliography. This bibliog- 

 raphy, which is fairly complete up to 1906, ia not duplicated here. Many references supple- 

 mentary to our own are to be found in it. 



Goal . 



