made
their escape, swam the river at Owensboro, Kentucky, 160 miles below
Louisville, Kentucky, and, in a week or so, were found one morning at
the gate of their old home at Lebanon. Directed by their homing sense
alone, these animals had made a journey of several hundred miles over
a route they had never seen!

Fishermen are aware that certain fish choose localities for
lurking-places, which they will share with no other fish. The black
bass, and brook trout, and sturgeon, and goggle-eye are familiar
examples of fish which have this habit.

On one occasion, I performed the following experiment: I took a black
bass from its home near a sunken stump, and, after passing a short piece
of thread through the web of its tail and knotting it, replaced it in
the river, two miles below its lurking-place. The next day I saw it in
its old home, clearly recognizable by the bit of thread which waved to
and fro in the clear water as the fish gently moved its tail!

In an examination of phenomena such as have been discussed in this
chapter, ay, throughout this book, we must lay aside the dogmatic
assertions of our superstitious ancestors, who, to paraphrase Roscoe,
"when awed by superstition, and subdued by hereditary prejudices, could
not only assent to the most incredible proposition, but could act in
consequence of these convictions, with as much energy and perseverance
as if they were the clearest deductions of reason, or the most evident
dictates of truth."[107]

[107] Roscoe, _Life of Leo X._, p. 3.

It will take the human race many, many years to unlearn, and to recover
from the effects of the superstitious cult of the shaman, who exists,
not only among savages, but also in the most highly civilized races of
the world! Superstition is the antithesis of knowledge; in fact, it is
but another name for ignorance.

There is yet another exceedingly interesting psychical trait to be
noticed in the lower animals, especially in insects; I refer to the
instinctive habit, letisimulation (_letum_, death, and _simulare_, to
feign). The word "instinctive" must not be used, however, when this
stratagem is to be observed in the higher animals other than the
opossum; for many of these animals sometimes make an occasional and a
_rational_ use of it, as I will endeavor to show in the next chapter.

CHAPTER IX

LETISIMULATION

The feigning of death by certain animals for the purpose of deceiving
their enemies, and thus secur