^ OF ANIMALS, 



Bufibn asserts, that a hawk or eagle can travel two hundred leagues in 

 ten hours, and relates a story of one that travelled two hundred and fifty 

 leagues in sixteen hours. 



A Newfoundland dog has in like manner been brought from Plymouth 

 to London by water, and having got loose, has run home by land with a 

 speed so rapid as to prove that his course must have been nearly in a 

 straight line, though every inch of it was unknown to him. 



At such instances we start back, and as far as we can, we disbeheve 

 them, and think we become wise in proportion as we become skeptical. 

 Meanwhile nature pursues her wonder-working course, equally uninflu- 

 enced by our doubts or our convictions.* 



Even among mankind, however, we occasionally meet with a sort of 

 sensation altogether as wonderful and inexplicable. For there are some 

 persons so peculiarly affected by the presence of a particular object, that 

 is neither seen, smelt, tasted, heard, or touched, as not only to be con- 

 scious of its presence, but to be in agony till it is removed. The vicinity 

 of a cat not unfrequently produces such an effect ; and 1 have been a 

 witness to the most decisive proofs of this in several instances. It is pos- 

 sible that the anomalous sense may in this instance result from a peculiar 

 irritability in some of the nervous branches of the organ of smell, which 

 may render them capable of being irritated in a new and pecuhar man- 

 ner ; but the persons thus affected are no more conscious of an excite- 

 ment in this organ of sense than in any other ; and from the originality 

 of the sensation itself find no terms in any language by which the sensa- 

 tion can be expressed. 



Sharks and rays are generally supposed by naturalists to be endowed 

 with a pecuhar sense in the organ of a tubular structure found immedi- 

 ately under the integuments of the head, though they have not agreed as 

 to the exact character of this additional sense. Trevannius calls it ge- 

 nerally a sixth organ of sensation. M. Jacobson, and Dr. de Blainville, 

 who quotes his authority, regard it as a local organ of touch. M. Roux, 

 who seems to have examined it with great attention, believes it to be the 

 source of a feeling of a middle nature between the two senses of touch 

 and hearing.! The bat appears to have, in like manner, an additional 

 sensific power, for it is observed to avoid external objects when in their 

 vicinity, while the eye, ear, and nose are closed, and there is no direct 

 touch : and this peculiar feeHng has been called a sixth sense generally 

 by naturahsts, without discriminating it farther. 



* The fact of the migratory power of one kind of animals confirms the fact of the naigra- 

 tory power of others. While the question was confined to birds it was too often denied 

 by many naturalists, merely from the difficulty of accounting for it ; and it was said, in oppo- 

 sition to Catesby and White, and all our best ornithologists, that our summer birds only dis- 

 appear by creeping into holes and crevices to hybernate. And hence, even so late as 1823, the 

 late Dr. Jeuner felt himself called upon to examine such assertions with a view of dispro- 

 Ting them ; which he has done in one of the most agreeable essays on the natural history of 

 migratory birds to be found in our own or any other language. A little reflection," says 

 he, " must compel us to confess that they are endowed with discriminating powers totally un- 

 known to, and for ever unattainable by man. I have no objection to admit the possibility that 

 birds may be overtaken by the cold of winter, and thus be thrown into the situation of other 

 animals which remain torpid at that season ; though 1 must own I never witnessed the fact, 

 nor could I ever obtain evidence on the subject that was to me satisfactory ; but, as it has 

 been often asserted, may I be allowed to suppose that some deception might have been prac- 

 tised with the design of misleading those to whom it might have seemed to appear obvious ?" 

 Phil. Trans. 1824. p. 11. The strongest argument against all such disbelief, arising fram the 

 difficulty of accounting for the migration of birds, is to turn to the migration of fishes, and to 

 the parallel cases of remote travel in other animals, which are given above. The respec- 

 tive marvels give support to each other, till disbelief itself becomes at length the greatest 

 marvel of the whole. s & 



t See further on this subject, Edi». Jonrn. of Science, No. HI. Art. in. p. 87, 



