is about all. This
homing instinct seems to be one of the special powers that the
animals cannot get along without. If the solitary wasp, for
instance, could not find her way back to that minute spot in the
field where her nest is made, a feat quite impossible to you or
me, so indistinguishable to our eye is that square inch of ground
in which her hole is made; or if the fur seal could not in spring
retrace its course to the islands upon which it breeds, through a
thousand leagues of pathless sea water, how soon the tribe of
each would perish!

The animal is, like the skater, a marvel of skill in one field
or element, or in certain fixed conditions, while man's varied
but less specialized powers make him at home in many fields. Some
of the animals outsee man, outsmell him, outhear him, outrun him,
outswim him, because their lives depend more upon these special
powers than his does; but he can outwit them all because he has
the resourcefulness of reason, and is at home in many different
fields. The condor "houses herself with the sky" that she may
have a high point of observation for the exercise of that
marvelous power of vision. An object in the landscape beneath
that would escape the human eye is revealed to the soaring
buzzard. It stands these birds in hand to see thus sharply; their
dinner depends upon it. If mine depended upon such powers of
vision, in the course of time I might come to possess it. I am
not certain but that we have lost another power that I suspect
the lower animals possess--something analogous to, or identical
with, what we call telepathy--power to communicate without words,
or signs, or signals. There are many things in animal life, such
as the precise concert of action among flocks of birds and fishes
and insects, and, at times, the unity of impulse among land
animals, that give support to the notion that the wild creatures
in some way come to share one another's mental or emotional
states to a degree and in a way that we know little or nothing
of. It seems important to their well-being that they should have
such a gift--something to make good to them the want of language
and mental concepts, and insure unity of action in the tribe.
Their seasonal migrations from one part of the country to another
are no doubt the promptings of an inborn instinct called into
action in all by the recurrence of the same outward conditions;
but the movements of the flock or the school seem to imply a
common im