CHAP. XIIL] LOWER ANIMALS. 215 



show a similar facility in finding their way through 

 immense mountainous tracks, so thickly wooded, that 

 vision can only penetrate for a few yards ahead ; or over 

 pathless wastes of prairie land, where a dreary sameness 

 reigns supreme. On this subject, Or. C. Merrill, writing 

 from Kansas, says :* 



" I have learned from the hunters and guides who spend their 

 lives on the plains and mountains west of us, that no matter how 

 far, or with what turns, they may have been led, in chasing the 

 bison or other game, they, on their return to camp, always take a 

 straight line. In explanation, they say that, unconsciously to 

 themselves, they have kept all the turns in their niind."f 



The excellence of this faculty in Siberians, Indians, and 

 others, whose daily mode of life of itself furnishes strong 

 motives for cultivating it, seems to show that practice may 



* "Nature," May 22, 1873, p. 77. 



f Eeferring to his travels in the State of Western Virginia, Mr. 

 Henry Forde (" Nature," April 17, 1873, p. 463) writes as follows : 

 " It is said that even the most experienced hunters of the forest- 

 covered mountains in that unsettled region are liable to a kind of 

 seizure that they 'lose their heads' all at once, and become con- 

 vinced that they are going in quite the contrary direction to what 

 they had intended, and that no reasoning nor pointing out of land- 

 marks by their companions, nor observations of the position of the 

 sun, can overcome their feeling; it is accompanied by great ner- 

 vousness and a general sense of dismay and ' upset.' The nervous- 

 ness comes after the seizure, and is not the cause of il. This is 

 spoken of by the natives as ' getting turned round.' The feeling 

 sometimes ceases suddenly, or it may wear away gradually." 

 Colonel Lodge, in his "Hunting Grounds of the Far West," 1S76, 

 speaks of the same kind of feelings seizing upon, and occasionally 

 demoralizing, old and experienced prairie travellers. Indian chiefs 

 all concurred in assuring G-. Catlin (" Life amongst the Indians," 

 p. 96) that " whenever a man is lost on the prairies, he travels in 

 a circle, and also that he invariably turns to the left ; of which 

 singular fact," the author adds, " I have become doubly convinced 

 by subsequent proofs." 



