THE SENSE OF DIRECTION 121 



whatever, to any point they wish to reach where 

 they have ever been before." This is the homing 

 instinct exactly as we see it developed in animals, 

 and it seems entirely to coincide with the kind of 

 mental projection of the attention to a definite known 

 point, which the " sense of direction " supposes. 

 There is nothing in the observed phenomena of the 

 successful homing of wild man in the forest to 

 contradict the assumption that, when once he has 

 mentally fixed the point at which he desires to arrive, 

 he keeps it before him in his mental vision, and 

 u goes for it " without conscious reference to particular 

 landmarks, tokens, or signs. It is open to him to 

 use all these, as the traveller uses the stars when 

 crossing the desert by night ; but we believe that in 

 many cases the " homing " man projects himself by a 

 mental effort, which abstracts his attention from land- 

 marks, yet carries him surely to the goal. Into this 

 abstraction particulars and inferences only introduce 

 confusion, as in the position described by Mr. Still- 

 man. The homing of Australian birds over one 

 thousand miles of intervening ocean to the islands of 

 New Zealand, does not seem very far removed in kind 

 from that of the Bushmen, or of Mr. Stillman in his 

 acquired disuse of reasoning, or from the isolated cases 

 of the return of untrained pigeons from a distance. 

 No one acquainted with the recent records of migra- 

 tion claims to have discovered a solution of the faculty 

 of return to a given spot across the open seas. What 

 guides the old birds is the problem at present offered 

 for solution. The case of the young, who are said 



