168 British War Dogs 



to attempt it, or, attempting it, will more or less completely 

 fail. His supposed instinct does not act out of his own 

 country. It appears to me, therefore, that to call in the 

 aid of a new and mysterious power to account for savages 

 being able to find that which under similar conditions we 

 could almost all of us perform, although perhaps less per- 

 fectly, is ludicrously unnecessary. 



" I shall attempt to show that much of what has been 

 attributed to instinct in birds, can be also very well ex- 

 plained by crediting them with those faculties of observation, 

 memory and imitation, and with that limited amount 

 of reason which they undoubtedly exhibit." 



Mr. Romanes, however, differs from Mr. Wallace to a 

 certain extent, and says : 



" Moreover, it is certain, that in many cases, if not as 

 a general rule, the animals, on their return journey, do not 

 traverse the actual route which they were taking in the 

 outgoing journey, but take the bee line ; so that, for 

 instance, if the outgoing journey has been made over 

 two sides of a triangle, the return journey will probably 

 be made over the third side. The remarkable fact is, that 

 the animals are able to find their way back over immense 

 distances, even though the outgoing journey has been made 

 at night, or in a closed box ; so that it is truly upon some 

 sense of direction, and not merely upon landmarks, that 

 they must rely. Now it is evident that this fact alone — 

 i.e., of animals not requiring to return by the same route — 

 is sufficient to dispose of the hypothesis advanced by 

 Mr. Wallace to the effect, that the return journey is due 

 to a memory of the odours perceived during the outgoing 

 journey, these odours serving as landmarks. Therefore, it 

 seems to me there are only two hypotheses open to us, 

 whereby to meet the facts. First, it has been thought 



