WAYS OF NATURE 
that animals have some means of communication 
with one another, especially the gregarious animals, 
that is quite independent of what we mean by lan- 
guage. It is like an interchange or blending of sub- 
conscious states, and may be analogous to telepathy 
among human beings. Observe what a unit a flock 
of birds becomes when performing their evolutions 
in the air. They are not many, but one, turning and 
flashing in the sun with a unity and a precision that 
it would be hard to imitate. One may see a flock 
of shore-birds that behave as one body: now they 
turn to the sun a sheet of silver; then, as their dark 
backs are presented to the beholder, they almost dis- 
appear against the shore or the clouds. It would 
seem as if they shared in a communal mind or spirit, 
and that what one felt they all felt at the same 
instant. 
In Florida I many times saw large schools of mul- 
lets fretting and breaking the surface of the water 
with what seemed to be the tips of their tails. A 
large area would be agitated and rippled by the backs 
or tails of a host of fishes. Then suddenly, while I 
looked, there would be one splash and every fish 
would dive. It was a multitude, again, acting as one 
body. Hundreds, thousands of tails slapped the 
water at the same instant and were gone. 
When the passenger pigeons were numbered by 
millions, the enormous clans used to migrate from 
one part of the continent to another. I saw the last 
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