Translation from Von Hartmann 119 



times over, have still been known to find their way home. 

 Here we can say no more than that their instinct has con- 

 ducted them — that the clairvoyance of the unconscious 

 has allowed them to conjecture their way.* 



Before an early winter, birds of passage collect them- 

 selves in preparation for their flight sooner than usual ; 

 but when the winter is going to be mild, they will either 

 not migrate at all, or travel only a small distance south- 

 ward. When a hard winter is coming, tortoises will make 

 their burrows deeper. If wild geese, cranes, etc., soon 

 return from the countries to which they had betaken them- 

 selves at the beginning of spring, it is a sign that a hot 

 and dry summer is about to ensue in those countries, 

 and that the drought will prevent their being able to rear 

 their young. In years of flood, beavers construct their 

 dwellings at a higher level than usual, and shortly before 

 an inundation the field-mice in Kamtschatka come out of 

 their holes in large bands. If the summer is going to be 

 dry, spiders may be seen in May and April, hanging from 

 the ends of threads several feet in length. If in winter 

 spiders are seen running about much, fighting with one 

 another and preparing new webs, there will be cold weather 

 within the next nine days, or from that to twelve : when 

 they again hide themselves there will be a thaw. I have 

 no doubt that much of this power of prophesying the 

 weather is due to a perception of certain atmospheric 

 conditions which escape ourselves, but this perception can 

 only have relation to a certain actual and now present 

 condition of the weather ; and what can the impression 

 made by this have to do with their idea of the weather 

 that will ensue ? No one will ascribe to animals a power 

 of prognosticating the weather months beforehand by 

 means of inferences drawn logically from a series of ob- 

 servations,^ to the extent of being able to foretell floods, 



1 " Das Hellsehen des Unbewussten hat sie den rechten Weg 

 ahnen lassen." — Philosophy of the Unconscious, p. 90, 3d ed., 1871. 



2 " Man wird doch wahrlich nicht den Thieren zumuthen woUen, 

 durch meteorologische Schlusse das Wetter auf Monate im Voraus zu 



