Gulf Coast breeze. [volume] (Crawfordville, Fla.) 1897-19??, 1898-04-15
HoMINc INSTINCT OF BIRDS.
A Specialist Concludes They Have II Sixth
Sense, That OF Orientation.

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Sense, That OF Orientation.
Captain Remand, the French special
list in charge of the military pigeon
service, is q firm believer in a sixth
sense in pigeons and other birds and
animals possessed of tho homing in
stinct, which he calls the sense OF
"orientation. He has defended his
theory at length in paper recently
read before the French Academic des
Sciences, claiming to have amply
proved it by special trials of various
kinds. He says if the FIVE senses act
ing together account for short distance
"boming," a sixth sense is required
for long distance in unknown places.
He says this organ is situated in the
semi circular canals of the ear. NJ.
Coyon and DR.. BONNER have shown
that any lesion which affects ii troubles
the orienting faculty of the patient,
whether man or animal. A pigeon let
fly at 400 miles from its cote takes the
back track it has come by the railway.
Having reached in this way the region
known to it, the bird relies on its or
binary senses, or else continues to de-
pend on its sixth sense.
The sixth sense only acts when the
others are inactive, and not in con-
junction with them. 1t guides the
bird along the more or less sinuous
way it has been taken. The other
senses, especially sight, enable it to
strike short cut home. From his
observations Captain Renaud deduces
this law: The instinct of distant orien-
tation is that faculty which animals
possess of taking the back track or
retracing way already taken. The
sixth sense is apparently Independent
of the external impressions which az
feet the other five senses.
Here is new experiment that seems
to confirm his theory. If pigeon
does not need local knowledge to find
its way home, it is possible to have q
travelling cote and accustom the birds
to wandering life. Suppose the cote
transplanted bodily to strange place,
without in any way troubling the
birds, these would still be able to find
their way back to it by the sixth sense.
Captain Renaud has realized this idea
by mounting the cotes IN wagons
travelling ali over France. The birds
know no other home, and in localities
quite strange to them find their way
back to 1t. Evidently, local know
ledge is out of the question, and they
rely on special sense.
Sometimes homing bird passes
over the cote without seeing it, as
though it were hypnotized, and con-
tinues till it reaches the station of the
cote the evening before. One birdre
traced the travelling cote from Bau-
pane to Houdain, and then followed
the railway by which it had come
there to Evreux, where it was caught.
Captain Renaud concludes that exist.
ing theories, which ascribe homipg to
local knowledge or local magnetic cur
rents, do not account for his facts, es-
pecially the return to travelling
home. But, say the advocates of that
theory, he does not seem to under
stand the magnetic theory of the fac
ulty. The magnetic currents of the
earth are not local, but universal, and
wherever the cote is placed the bird
can guide itself by them. His expert
ments, they say, so far from contro-
verting the magnetic hypothesis. tend
rather to confirm it, and had there
been an electrician at the "seance" of
the academic when he read his paper,
this would have been pointed out