tried to explain thein by endowing the beast with the calculation and reasoning powers which we would use if we were in his position.
It is in this way that some pigeon fanciers attribute the return of the pigeons to a wonderful memory of the locality. In his daily sport the bird rising above his home will note the landmarks of the country, study their relative position, and will notice them in relation to his home, thus making a veritable triangulation of the country where he dwells. According to others, the bird does in time acquire a profound knowledge of the local magnetic currents. Such an hypothesis explains a mysterious fact by means of others still more mysterious. It has even been seriously suggested that a pigeon orients himself by the course of the stars.
We think that these fantastic theories should be rejected; an animal can not be a mathematician, a geometrician, an electrician, or an astronomer; and observers have been wrong to attribute any intellectual manifestation to a material action which only puts to use a very perfect organ. The animals most highly gifted in the art of orientation at a distance are not, in fact, the most intelligent, but those which possess the most powerful means of locomotion.
Such is the idea which has inspired us in the study of the mechanism of orientation. We have formulated a series of very simple propositions founded on observation and explaining a number of facts long known. It has been possible to draw from our theory many interesting inferences which experiment has confirmed. In expressing our opinion of this much disputed subject we hope to arouse discussion and incite to new researches which will doubtless lead us to a complete knowledge of the truth.
