75 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE METHOD OF HOMING PIGEONS. 



BY C. F. HODGE, PH.D., 



ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY, CLARK UNIVERSITY. 



WHEN Sir John Lubbock * rotated a paper disk upon which 

 ants were moving in a given direction and the ants turned 

 so as to maintain their course, it seemed as if they were endowed 

 with some mysterious sense or power of direction, like that of a 

 magnetic needle upon its pivot. When he substituted for the 

 plain disk a circular hat-box, which, as he thought, must consti- 

 tute for an ant the entire visible universe, and still the ants turned 

 as the box was rotated, the fact seemed proved. Ants must have 

 located within their bodies, and independent of ordinary sensory 

 impressions from the external world, the power of going in any 

 direction they wish. This conclusion is far reaching in its conse- 

 quences. If ants possess such mysterious power, may it not exist 

 in other, or all, animals ? It must be of the nature of a special 

 sense. Where, then, is the sense organ ? How should ideas of 

 animal sensation be modified by it ? 



Many writers would have ceased experimenting at this point, 

 and gone off into chapters of ecstatic hypothesis about this fathom- 

 less mystery, this unmistakable " sense of direction " developed 

 to such perfection in so humble a creature. Not so with Lubbock. 

 When he covered the hat-box, then rotated it, the ants did not 

 turn, but were turned with the box- ; or when he shifted the posi- 

 tion of his candles to the opposite side, as he rotated the box, the 

 ants did not turn. And so their action fell from the realm of ex- 

 quisite mystery to take its place among such commonplaces as 

 that of the sailor steering his course by the lighthouse or the 

 stars, or that of a man guided home by the light of his own camp 

 fire. 



A considerable literature, pro and con, has gathered about 

 the subject, in which we find frequent use of such expressions as 

 " direction-sense," " sens de la direction," " sense of orientation," 

 "faculte d' orientation," " instinct of location," " magnetic sense," 

 " Orientierungssinne," " Gefuhl der Kardinalrichtungen," and 

 many more. By whatever terms designated, the idea is that ani- 

 mals possess some special sense, some occult faculty, by which, 

 without reference to external objects, they are able to guide their 

 movements aright. This power, it is commonly thought, is not 

 possessed, .or only in a rudimentary degree, by civilized man, is 

 more highly developed in savages, and may be found in its per- 

 fection in certain migratory animals. 



* Sir John Lubbock. Ants, Bees, and Wasps. New York, 1882. See pp. 260 ff. 



