THE LAWS OF ORIENTATION AMONG ANIMALS 489 



would have left to return again over the aerial path which had brought 

 him to Evreux. He only thought of finding his lost cote. 



We carried him to Graud-Couronne and set him free a few steps from 

 his cote. But the sense of orientation from a distance, the sixth sense, 

 was acting almost to the exclusion of the other five. The bird made 

 liis way back again, passed, as if hypnotized, in sight of his home — with- 

 out seeing it, 1 and reached Evreux the point in the itinerary which he 

 sought to reestablish. 



His calculation was foiled, when led to the home of his owner and set 

 at liberty he then knew where he was. The five senses, reawakened 

 by stronger stimuli, rose supreme, and the sixth sense, having become 

 useless, refused to act- 

 There is at Orleans a depot for pigeons where the birds are kept 

 indoors. The pigeons which are shut in here and which come from the 

 cotes of Paris and the north, live in a semi-obscurity and in absolute 

 ignorance of what passes outside. When, after a month or two of confine- 

 ment, they are to be released, the precaution is taken to carry them some 

 miles from this transitory home, to which, moreover, no pleasant mem- 

 ory can attract them. We have ascertained that very often the pigeons 

 know how to return to this house to which they do not even know the 

 approaches. They come and rest on the roof, then after a very brief 

 stay, take their bearings and disappear on the way back to their own 

 home. 



The law of retracement enables us to explain the action. Taken to 

 the station of Aubrais, for instance, and released there, he will retrace 

 his way and come to hover over the depot which represents lor him the 

 terminus of the road by which he was brought to Orleans. It is, then, 

 from there that he will depart to reverse that journey whose memory 

 has remained deeply graven on his mind. 



We might cite a great many examples of the same sort to show that 

 a lost pigeon always returns to the point where it was released. To 

 convince ourselves of this it is sufficient to glance at the roofs of the 

 stations of Paris, Orleans, Blois, Tours, Poitiers, Bordeaux, etc., 

 where every Sunday, in good weather, hundreds, and sometimes thou- 

 sands, of pigeons are set free. On Monday numbers of pigeons, lost the 

 day before, return here. Having been unsuccessful in their first attempt 

 to return to their homes, they will make a second and even a third 

 attempt to find the right road. 



When set free the day before, the pigeon took his flight, he flew as 

 fast as possible from the place where he was released, a spot to which 



1 If sight is the principal means for orientation for the pigeon, those living in the 

 cotes of the Grenelle quarter must be particularly favored since the building of the. 

 Eiffel tower. This is a prominent landmark easily seen within a radius of 200 kilo- 

 meters around Paris. But upou inquiry we find the percentage of losses suffered 

 duriug the training season from the pigeon farms around the Champ de Mars is 

 exactly the same to-day as before the construction of the low er. 



