Page:The Migration of Birds - Thomas A Coward - 1912.pdf/74

58 The duck was a domesticated bird, but the incident is not without interest; the homing faculty was clearly exhibited, but it was not infallible; the bird made a mistake. So, inexperienced young birds, travelling instinctively by orientation may, and do, make mistakes.

Human beings, in varying degree, possess a sense of direction, and some a wonderful power of finding their way in strange places; it is most marked amongst those men we choose to call uncivilised, who, indeed, live in closer touch with nature than those of us who depend so much on compass, map, road, train and tram; we, as path-finders, are degenerate. Middendorf marvelled at the powers of the Samoyeds, but when he questioned them was met by blank surprise, and the cross-question—"How does the little Arctic fox find its way aright on the great Tundra?"

In addition to this instinctive power, the bird has eyes and brain. We can afford to put aside as purely speculative Middendorf's suggestion that the bird is impelled or dragged by magnetic force, but we cannot deny that it uses its eyes and that it has a wonderful memory; its second journey will be easier than the first: for it will recognise landmarks, just as the drake recognised something familiar when it neared home. Sight, however, cannot be always necessary, for, at the Kentish