à- , ; 
700 Crow Roosts and Roosting Crows. [August, 
but also to all birds. Not that I would infer that power of scent is 
of any considerable value in the migration of birds, nor would it 
be fair to assume that unaided vision is more than a prime factor 
therein. 
’Tis mortal to take our observations from a human standpoint 
and refer all that goes beyond /#max attainment in the lower ani- 
mals to “instinct.” 
Research in natural science as long since paid full penalty for 
_ her sins in this purgatory of original thought, and the time has 
fully come for us to advance into a higher sphere, querying the 
“ what” and the “ why ” in the Emersonian assurance that “ un- 
doubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswer- 
able.” Phrenologically considered the crow has an excessive 
“bump” for locality in one corner of his wonderful memory, and 
size, color (?), form and calculation cluster about his knowing eyes. 
No less than Audubon long ago professed to have discovered that 
a crow can count five. Have modern ornithologists done as 
much ? 
Be this as it may, we have in our corvine methods of flight an 
important premise for the final understanding of the laws govern- 
ing migration and of the so-called migratory “ instinct,” which is 
nothing more or less than the highly perfected sense or union of 
senses which enables migrants to traverse tracts of territory 
(which the uncultured, imperfect mind of man calls illimitable) 
with a precision which equals that of the wandering crow 1M 
_ finding its roost, or which a man exercises on a still smaller scale 
in the streets of his native town. 
A North American Indian can form a far better conception of 
‘migration than a Yankee could, inasmuch as the former is by all 
odds the better explorer of trackless forests and boundless præ- 
_ ties. Would we have a “bird’s-eye view ” of this subject? Thea 
by all means let us “take wings of fancy and ascend” to a point 
without the earth, though it be merely to understand how 4 place 
may be so far off “as the crow flies.” yee 
As yet our unfaith in aérial conquests has kept this inquiry m 
onomic ornithology at a stand-still; but the spirit of Danns ig 
Green is again at work; may its leaven work mightily in the 
fforts of the A. O. U., through its committee on bird migration. 
As yet no evidence is at hand to justify the supp sition g 
e roosting place which Wilson and Godman have vaguely de- 
