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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