134 THE BIRDS OF HELIGOLAND 



' Overjoyed at having at last discovered in these men my inter- 

 preters of that great mystery of nature, the capacity of orientation 

 possessed by animals, I endeavoured to draw out from them the 

 secret of their art, and pressed them on every possible opportunity. 

 They, however, only looked at me in a stupefied manner, were sur- 

 prised at my astonishment, and supposed that that was an ordinary 

 every-day occurrence, and self-evident: whereas, on the other 

 hand, our inability of finding our way seemed to them quite 

 incomprehensible. At last they completely disarmed me with the 

 question : " Well, and how is it that the little Arctic fox finds her 

 way on the great Tundra without ever going astray ? " So there I 

 was, once more thrown back on the unconscious performance of an 

 inherited animal faculty.' 



In one case which he considered doubtful, von Middendorff 

 insisted on following his compass, but very soon made ' the highly 

 surprising discovery that my compass, and not the directive sense 

 of the Samoyedes, had deceived me. It was the former, not the 

 latter, which, owing to the proximity of the magnetic pole, had 

 been drawn to an unexpected extent out of the right direction, and 

 I recognised to my shame that I had done these good people an 

 injustice.' 



Hence these Samoyedes, too, wandered in the right track with- 

 out being able to give a reason for doing so, or, in other words, they 

 also were led by instinct. 



I ought not to leave unmentioned that von Middendorff 's state- 

 ments in regard to the migratory movements of animals, covering 

 about one hundred and thirteen large quarto pages of his work, 

 comprise without a doubt the most valuable observations and 

 reports which have ever been published in regard to this subject. 



Of more recent works on the migrations of birds, the most exten- 

 sive is that of J. A. Palmen, entitled Die Zugstrassen der Vogel. 1 

 It is a treatise of the highest interest, in which the author makes 

 use of a large amount of material, resulting from the observation of 

 travellers and local investigators, on a small number of Arctic shore- 

 and sea-birds, from which he endeavours to show that birds during 

 their migrations are in the habit of following shore-lines and the 

 courses of large rivers. In illustration of his theory he adds a map 

 of the Old World in which these routes are shown from 80 to 30 N. 

 latitude, in their varied windings along sea-shores and the courses 

 of rivers flowing north or south. 



Observations in Nature on the author's own part appear not to 

 have been made the basis for this work. It is here unnecessary to 

 express an opinion as to this conception of the migratory movement, 



1 The Migration- Routes of Bird*. 



