1 64 THE HOMING FACULTY. 



we must either cast science to the winds and say, as our 

 pious fathers (and mothers) said, that " God guides the 

 birds ; " or we must accept the view that they return by aid 

 of their own intelligent observation of the direction taken in 

 the outward route. No one here will doubt that this is the 

 true solution, but the " how, and by the exercise of what 

 faculties " does not lie on the surface, and the achievement 

 being outside our own capacities, the explanation can be 

 reached only by advancing hypotheses and putting them to 

 the test. 



Apart from the negative evidence that the homing faculty 

 is an intelligent one, we have the positive evidence that it 

 is improvable by experience. The feat of returning to the 

 cote from points several hundred miles distant, and over 

 unknown country, although frequently performed by Homing 

 Pigeons, requires more or less preparatory training. Young 

 birds are liberated at comparatively short distances from 

 home, and the distance lengthened with their growing ex- 

 perience, until with their faculties fully developed, and 

 their powers of observation quickened by practice, they may 

 be taken several hundred miles across the ocean with the 

 confidence that, barring accidents, they will return by an 

 approximately straight course. The bird being liberated 

 rises into the air and starts on its return journey. Intel- 

 ligence cannot point the way without a basis of perceptions 

 derived through the senses, nor can the senses act directly. 

 At a few hundred miles distance keenness of sight can avail 

 nothing, as the desired haven is below the horizon ; nor is it 

 conceivable that the superior acuteness of any sense which 

 the bird shares in common with us could afford any possible 

 guidance. It appears to me, then, that the homing faculty must 

 be due to an ever-present consciousness of direction taken, 

 aided by close observation awakened by the desire to return 

 to the cote. I do not, of course, by " consciousness of direc- 

 tion " mean that the bird has an inborn faculty of determining 

 the direction of the distant place he wishes to reach. If this 



