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Article ANIMAL AND HUMAN INSTINCT. Page 1 of 3 →
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Animal And Human Instinct.
ANIMAL AND HUMAN INSTINCT .
( Concluded from jpage 349 . )
Aktmal Migrations . —There is considerable reason to doubt whether instinct has had any share in inditing the very curious page of natural history which here opens upon us . Well authenticated and very numerous are the instances in which a dog or a cat , having been conveyed blind-fold hundreds of miles from home , to a part of the country , quite strange to the animal , has
been found at home again in an incredibly short space of time , as if it had travelled in a balloon , or by an express-train ; the instances here referred to having occurred before the invention of locomotion by steam . The carrier-pigeon has , for many generations , shown something like a monopoly of this prodigious inspiration of geographical knowledge . It has been supposed that the eye of this extraordinary bird is endowed with so distant a sight as to enable it to
discern small objects at a distance of fifty miles , which is contrary to the laws of optics , and clearly impossible . But even if it were possible , what shall we say of a sheep or an ass which shall find its way through a strange country to a considerable distance , so as to reach some spot known to the animal in less time than might be supposed requisite for the journey ? Yet such facts are recorded on authority
which cannot be impugned . Again , the convexity of the eye of the bee is so great that it must evidently be very near-sighted , as doubtless is requisite for the work it has to do . Yet bees will take an excursion of five , six , or eight miles , and return to their hives " ere set of sun . " In short , this faculty exists in so many animals , and is so curiously and marvellously developed on special occasions , that Dr . Good has expressed a suspicion of the existence of a sixth sense in certain animal tribes . His theory , however , is not confirmed
by anatomy , although it is not impossible , as this naturalist elsewhere suggests , that some modification of the sense of smell may guide some animals on certain occasions . But this would not account for a twentieth part of the phenomena in question . Animals are guided in some of these migratory travels by an intelligence which has more of the marvellous in it , and which really savours more of the supernatural , than all the table-turning , clairvoyance , spirit-rapping , and other fleeting wonders of this credulous age . A dog had
been transported across the Atlantic , and not liking his quarters , took his passage in a home-bound vessel , and again found his master in London . Another dog was taken from Arundel to London in a closely-covered cart , tied up in a yard near Grosvenor Square on the same evening , and found his way back to Arundel before sunset the next evening—a distance of sixty miles . And lest this should seem impossible , Dr . Beattic , whose authority no one will question , mentions that he actually knew an instance of a dog being carried in a basket thirty miles through a country he had never seen , and finding
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Animal And Human Instinct.
ANIMAL AND HUMAN INSTINCT .
( Concluded from jpage 349 . )
Aktmal Migrations . —There is considerable reason to doubt whether instinct has had any share in inditing the very curious page of natural history which here opens upon us . Well authenticated and very numerous are the instances in which a dog or a cat , having been conveyed blind-fold hundreds of miles from home , to a part of the country , quite strange to the animal , has
been found at home again in an incredibly short space of time , as if it had travelled in a balloon , or by an express-train ; the instances here referred to having occurred before the invention of locomotion by steam . The carrier-pigeon has , for many generations , shown something like a monopoly of this prodigious inspiration of geographical knowledge . It has been supposed that the eye of this extraordinary bird is endowed with so distant a sight as to enable it to
discern small objects at a distance of fifty miles , which is contrary to the laws of optics , and clearly impossible . But even if it were possible , what shall we say of a sheep or an ass which shall find its way through a strange country to a considerable distance , so as to reach some spot known to the animal in less time than might be supposed requisite for the journey ? Yet such facts are recorded on authority
which cannot be impugned . Again , the convexity of the eye of the bee is so great that it must evidently be very near-sighted , as doubtless is requisite for the work it has to do . Yet bees will take an excursion of five , six , or eight miles , and return to their hives " ere set of sun . " In short , this faculty exists in so many animals , and is so curiously and marvellously developed on special occasions , that Dr . Good has expressed a suspicion of the existence of a sixth sense in certain animal tribes . His theory , however , is not confirmed
by anatomy , although it is not impossible , as this naturalist elsewhere suggests , that some modification of the sense of smell may guide some animals on certain occasions . But this would not account for a twentieth part of the phenomena in question . Animals are guided in some of these migratory travels by an intelligence which has more of the marvellous in it , and which really savours more of the supernatural , than all the table-turning , clairvoyance , spirit-rapping , and other fleeting wonders of this credulous age . A dog had
been transported across the Atlantic , and not liking his quarters , took his passage in a home-bound vessel , and again found his master in London . Another dog was taken from Arundel to London in a closely-covered cart , tied up in a yard near Grosvenor Square on the same evening , and found his way back to Arundel before sunset the next evening—a distance of sixty miles . And lest this should seem impossible , Dr . Beattic , whose authority no one will question , mentions that he actually knew an instance of a dog being carried in a basket thirty miles through a country he had never seen , and finding