THE INSTINCT OF ANIMALS 161 



conscious dead-reckoning in the mind ; but in the 

 case of animals it is doubtless often supplemented 

 and directed by stimuli which do not reach our 

 senses. The character or direction of the light, 

 changes of temperature, nature of the wind, odours, 

 emanations, or radiations which mean nothing to 

 us, or which do not reach our senses at all, may pro- 

 foundly influence animals whose safety or welfare 

 for innumerable generations in the past has depended 

 on correctly interpreting in action the message which 

 they convey. 



That the clue or explanation in all these cases of 

 instinct is a comparatively simple one, if we only 

 knew it, is, I think, highly probable. Recently, in 

 South Africa, in discussing the scouting during the 

 late war with one who had acted as a scout, I 

 challenged a test. We were taken out on a dark, 

 cloudy, and still night, turned round many times, 

 and at last asked to point in the direction of the 

 place whence we had started. My companion 

 failed ; I succeeded without hesitation, and I 

 seemed to him for the time being to be endowed 

 with a special and unaccountable sense of direction. 

 What I had done, however, was simply to experi- 

 ment with a trick known to poachers and sportsmen 

 in England. I had wetted my fingers, and, holding 

 them up, was enabled to distinguish the direction of 

 the very slight air current. My inexplicable gift 

 was, in short, due to no more than the simple device 

 which had rendered me, for a moment, extra sensitive 

 to the direction of the wind. 



However wonderful and however inexplicable 

 animal instincts like the foregoing may be, they 

 are not, I think, usually accompanied by the exercise 

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