APPENDICES 
423 
fact-—that there are wild animals—predatory and defenceless 
alike—capable of detecting the presence of other animals, by 
scent alone , up to a mile, or two miles, even at three miles’ 
distance? Instances in clear proof of the longest of these 
distances are given in my Wild Norway (1897). 1 
Again, to glance for a moment at the specialised power 
that lies in Sight. Consider the telescopic vision of a vulture 
soaring in the arc of heaven, far beyond human ken—though 
he spans 10 feet across the wings!—yet able at that vast 
altitude instantly to detect blood-stains where a wounded 
animal has crossed the desert-—say 10,000 feet b elow . Con¬ 
sider, also, as showing how faulty and unsatisfying is our 
knowledge of such matters that only a few years ago—and 
even to-day, for all I know—our standard works on ornithology 
invariably attributed such feats of the vulture to its amazing 
gifts of scent. It was left to the author to point out that 
neither vultures nor eagles (or practically land-birds of any 
kind) possess any perceptible powers of scent at all —The Field , 
December 1911 and January 1912. 2 Such factors as these are 
of vital import in considering such questions as the safety, the 
maintenance, and the protection of animal-life. Surely they 
ought to have been examined, if not explored, before embarking 
in wild speculations on colour as a protective ? 
Every wild creature on earth is protected by the conscious¬ 
ness that from hour to hour, by night as by day, its life depends 
1 Whether the term “scent” meets the case or not, at least our tongue 
provides no other. Such long-range perceptions may be attributable to 
causes or to emanations unknown and impalpable to us. Thus, on our 
Northumbrian moors, we have certain insects (as, e.g., the oak-eggar and 
fox-moth) the males of which detect the presence of a female up to quite 
incalculable distances. Carry in your pocket a captive female and soon 
the moor for miles to leeward will be occupied by a procession of male 
pilgrims to the shrine. Modern discoveries in “wireless telegraphy,” and 
similar marvels of practical science, suggest the thought that there may 
yet remain undiscovered other cryptic elements in the atmosphere, other 
physical laws, or physical senses affecting the animal-world, hitherto un¬ 
suspected and undreamt of by us. That lower world has enjoyed its 
“wireless” for ages before Marconi was born. 
2 I am not overlooking the experiments of Darwin with condors in 
South America; nor the observations of Tristram {Ibis, 1859, p. 280) or 
of Baker {Nile Tributaries , p. 492). See also Newton’s Dictionary of 
Birds , p. 1017, Note. 
