ness and damp: an existence of a few weeks'
duration does not allow of this. And, even if they knew all about the
four cardinal points, there is no difference in climate between the spot
where their nest lies and the spot at which they are released; so that
does not help them to settle the direction in which they are to travel.

To explain these many mysteries, we are driven therefore to appeal to
yet another mystery, that is to say, a special sense denied to mankind.
Charles Darwin, whose weighty authority no one will gainsay, arrives
at the same conclusion. To ask if the animal be not impressed by the
terrestrial currents, to enquire if it be not influenced by the close
proximity of a magnetic needle: what is this but the recognition of
a magnetic sense? Do we possess a similar faculty? I am speaking, of
course, of the magnetism of the physicists and not of the magnetism of
the Mesmers and Cagliostros. Assuredly we possess nothing remotely like
it. What need would the mariner have of a compass, were he himself a
compass?

And this is what the great scientist acknowledges: a special sense, so
foreign to our organism that we are not able to form a conception of
it, guides the Pigeon, the Swallow, the Cat, the Mason-bee and a host of
others when away from home. Whether this sense be magnetic or no I will
not take upon myself to decide; I am content to have helped, in no small
degree, to establish its existence. A new sense added to our number:
what an acquisition, what a source of progress! Why are we deprived
of it? It would have been a fine weapon and of great service in the
struggle for life. If, as is contended, the whole of the animal kingdom,
including man, is derived from a single mould, the original cell, and
becomes self-evolved in the course of time, favouring the best-endowed
and leaving the less well-endowed to perish, how comes it that this
wonderful sense is the portion of a humble few and that it has left no
trace in man, the culminating achievement of the zoological progression?
Our precursors were very ill-advised to let so magnificent an
inheritance go: it was better worth keeping than a vertebra of the
coccyx or a hair of the moustache.

Does not the fact that this sense has not been handed down to us
point to a flaw in the pedigree? I submit the little problem to the
evolutionists; and I should much like to know what their protoplasm and
their nucleus have to say to it.

Is this unknown sense loca