WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



very circumstance insists that it shall not be con- 

 sidered an unvarying, unreasoning instinct. 



Enough has now been said, perhaps, to enable 

 one to see that, however much the bird may be 

 aided by an acute sense of direction a capability, 

 I mean, of preserving a straight course, once ascer- 

 tained, which sense some may prefer to speak of 

 as an " instinct " the homing faculty of the hom- 

 ing-pigeon is the result of education, and is not 

 a matter of intuition at all. 



The bee pursues a truly similar course. When 

 he is loaded with nectar, you will note him cease 

 humming about the heads of the flowers and spring 

 up in a swift, vertical spiral, and, after circling 

 about a moment, shoot homeward "in a bee-line." 

 Evidently he has "got his bearings/' Had you 

 watched him the first time he ever left his hive 

 you would have observed precisely similar conduct 

 to acquaint himself with the surroundings. 



How a bird like the albatross, the man-of-war- 

 hawk, or the petrel, swinging on tireless pinions 

 in apparently aimless flight over the tossing and 

 objectless ocean, suddenly rouses its reserve of 

 strength to traverse in a day or two the hundreds 

 of miles between it and the rocky shores where it 

 builds its nest, or how it finds the lone islet which 



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