Where Silence Is Eloquent 



but it is still amazing that wind-blown creatures 

 can follow an invisible air-trail through what must 

 be to them a constant tempest and whirlwind of 

 air currents, until they come unerringly to the one 

 desired spot in a limitless universe. I have shown 

 that pretty sight of dancing wings to many au- 

 diences, after predicting what would happen; 

 and always they saw it with wonder, as if there 

 were magic in it. 



The moth mystery may be dissolved by some 

 such purely physical formula; but what physical 

 sense will explain the fact that when I turned 

 a modest hen-pheasant loose in the spring, in a 

 region where my wide-ranging setter and I never 

 discovered a pheasant, she was immediately joined 

 by a gloriously colored mate, and soon there was a 

 hidden nest and then young pheasants to watch? 

 Most birds and beasts are questing widely in the 

 mating season, and their senses seem to be more 

 keen at this time, or more concentrated on a single 

 object. On grounds of what we thoughtlessly 

 call chance, therefore, they would be more apt to 

 find mates when they are keenly looking for them; 

 but giving them every possible chance in a wide 

 region where the species is almost extinct, and then 

 multiplying that chance a hundred times, I still 

 find it hard to believe that the meeting of two rare 

 animals is either accidental or the result of or- 



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