t
sense seems to be much more acute in civilized man than it is in
savages. This, for certain psychical reasons, unnecessary to detail
here, is a necessary result of evolutionary growth and development.[102]

[102] Compare Tyler, _Anthropology_; De Quatrefages, _The Human
Species_; Peschel, _The Races of Man_; Lombroso, _L'Uomo Delinquente_;
Ellis, _The Criminal_; the writer, "Criminal Anthropology," _N. Y.
Medical Record_, January 13, 1894.

As far as I have been able to learn, after much research in natural
history, the anthropoid apes do not show that they possess the sense of
direction in a marked degree; thus we see that the immediate ancestors
of pithecoid man had already begun to lose this sense, which in man is
entirely wanting, and the absence of which should not be a matter of
surprise in the slightest degree, but rather a result that should be
expected.

Evidences of this sense are to be observed in animals of exceedingly low
organization. On one occasion, while studying a water-louse, as I have
already described elsewhere in this book, I saw the little creature swim
to a hydra, pluck off one of its buds, then swim a short distance away
and take shelter behind a small bit of mud, where it proceeded to devour
its tender morsel. In a short while, much to my surprise, the louse
again swam to the hydra, again procured a bud, and again swam back to
its hiding-place. This occurred three times during the hour I had it
under observation. The louse probably discovered the hydra the first
time by accident; but when it swam back to the source of its food-supply
the second time and then returned again to its sheltering bit of mud, it
clearly evinced conscious memory of route and a sense of direction.

The common garden-snail is a homing animal, and it will always return to
a particular spot after it has made an excursion in search of food. In
front of my dwelling there is a brick wall capped by a stone coping; the
overhanging edge of this coping forms a moist, cool home in summer for
hundreds of snails. Last summer I took six of these creatures, and,
after marking their shells with a paint of gum arabic and zinc oxide, I
set them free on the lawn some distance away from the wall. In course of
time, four of them returned to their homes beneath the stone coping; the
other two were probably killed and eaten by blackbirds, numbers of which
I noticed during the day feeding on the sward.

The centre of the sense o