ANIMAL COMMUNICATION 
flight of them up the Hudson River valley in the 
spring of 1875. All day they streamed across the sky. 
One purpose seemed to animate every flock and 
every bird. It was as if all had orders to move to the 
same point. The pigeons came only when there was 
beech-mast in the woods. How did they know we 
had had a beech-nut year? It is true that a few 
straggling bands were usually seen some days in 
advance of the blue myriads: were these the scouts, 
and did they return with the news of the beech-nuts ? 
If so, how did they communicate the intelligence 
and set the whole mighty army in motion ? 
The migrations among the four-footed animals 
that sometimes occur over a large part of the coun- 
try — among the rats, the gray squirrels, the rein- 
deer of the north — seem to be of a similar char- 
acter. How does every individual come to share in 
the common purpose? An army of men attempting 
to move without leaders and without a written or 
spoken language becomes a disorganized mob. Not 
so the animals. There seems to be a community of 
mind among them in a sense that there is not among 
men. The pressure of great danger seems to develop 
in a degree this community of mind and feeling 
among men. Under strong excitement we revert 
more or less to the animal state, and are ruled by 
instinct. It may well be that telepathy — the power 
to project one’s mental or emotional state so as to 
impress a friend at a distance — is a power which we 
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