COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 29 



Among wholly unsolved problems ranks the nature 

 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 



