158 MIGRATION AND DIRECTION 



that of direction by metaphor or illustration, likening 

 it to something else. Or we might, a la Frankenstein, 

 construct a mechanical monster full of an infinite 

 number of wheels and springs and numbered buttons 

 — one, two, three, etc. — to be touched in order at 

 each and every turn the monster may take in his 

 peregrinations. A less clumsy contrivance might be 

 made to illustrate migration — a flying machine with 

 the necessary clockwork in its bowels, wound up to 

 fly north and south a given distance — five hundred to 

 nine or ten thousand miles, let us say — then to drop 

 quietly down on a suitable predestined landing-place. 



The sense of direction is like the unconscious sense 

 of smell, or rather of the specialised olfactory nerves, 

 which to my thinking convey knowledge from out- 

 side without our knowing it. It is an unconscious 

 power or faculty in us — in that particular nerve of 

 the brain. Yet although it functions independently, 

 like our breathing, we are conscious that we possess 

 it — and by we I mean man in a state of nature — 

 that we can rely on it as we can on our legs to carry 

 us whithersoever we desire to go, and that finally it 

 will guide us safely to our destination. 



But in migration — to project ourselves, let us say, 

 into the bird mind — there is no reliance on anything 

 in us, no conscious guiding principle: it is simply 

 a rushing away from we know not what into the 

 unknown. A passion, a panic, like that which some- 

 times falls on a herd of wild horses and sends them 

 rushing away from some real or imaginary danger. 



Migration does not present itself in this aspect to 



