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 llth of 1878 they repeated the 

 trip at good speed. Such feats are not uncommon with 

 Belgian birds the best of all and there have been sev- 

 eral authenticated instances of their going off-handed from 

 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, I 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 



