Page:Bird-lore Vol 01.djvu/375

 The Orientation of Birds 147 plished by the animal. Many very interesting statements have been made concerning their habits, and their manner of Hving ; but when it is a question of tracing back effect to cause the observer has generally taken a false direction. Wrongfully taking himself as a term of comparison, he asks what he would do in order to accomplish a certain instinctive act occurring among beasts. It is just in this way that some colombophiles attribute the return of the Pigeon to a wonderful local memory. In his daily recreation the animal flying above the Pigeon cote would note the salient in- equalities of the soil, would study their situation, and would use them for guiding points to his dwelling, tracing in this way a veri- table triangulation on the country he inhabits. According to others, the animal would base himself on the meteorological record, or else would acquire, in time, a thorough knowledge of the local magnetic currents. Such a hypothesis explains one mysterious fact by other facts still more mysterious. Some have even asserted that the Pigeon takes his direction according to the course of the stars. We think that this theory is fantastic, and must be rejected. The animal could not be a mathmetician, geometrician, electrician, or astronomer. The explanation we advance is more simple. We have stated that the facts of orientation group themselves under two categories : (i) near orientation and (2) distant orientation. Near orientation is based on observation, employing the five senses — objective organs. It puts in play the memory, the reason, the free will of the animal. It chooses one solution and takes the shortest road for its return. Distant orientation is based on the functional activity of a subjective organ which is situated in the semicircular canals of the ear, and which registers mechanically the road passed over ; this sense of direction given to the animal the idea of its position for returning to the points of its departure. The return is governed thus by the Law of Reverse Scent. The animal does not now choose its route ; there is but one solution at its disposal — to return by the road which it came. Orientation over familiar ground, based on observation, memory, reason and, in a certain measure, free will, is an intellectual act ; Orientation over unknown and distant land, based on the functional activity of an organ, is an impulsive and irrational act. The most gifted animals in regard to distant orientation are not, in effect, the most intelligent, but are those which possess the most powerful means of locomotion. Thus it is that birds, infinitely less intelligent that certain quadrupeds, have over the latter an incontes- table superiority for distant orientation.