landers' eye and ear is equally singular: they can hear and distinguish objects which would totally escape an European. This circumstance renders them very acceptable guides to our sportsmen in the woods, as they never fail to point out the game before any European can discover it."

Another author says of a New Zealander, who accompanied him to England, "It was worthy of remark how much his sight and hearing were superior to other persons on board the ship; the sound of a distant gun was distinctly heard, or a strange sail readily discernible, by Moyhanger, when no other man on board could hear or perceive them."

The Hottentots "by the quickness of their eye, will discover deer and other sorts of game when very far distant; and they are equally expert in watching a bee to its nest. They no sooner hear the humming of the insect, than they squat themselves on the ground, and, having caught it with the eye, follow it to an incredible distance."

Barrow relates the following anecdote of one whom he had left behind ill on a journey: "He had fallen asleep about the middle of the preceding day, and had not awakened till night. Though very dark and unacquainted with a single step of our route, he had found us by following the track of the waggon. At this sort of business a Hottentot is uncommonly clever. There is not an animal among the numbers that range the wilds of Africa, if he be at all acquainted with it, the print of whose foot he cannot distinguish. The

print of

any

of his companions feet he would single out among a thousand."

Dr. Somerville confirms this statement, and refers the superiority of the Hottentots in these points to constant exercise of the organs.

In his frequent intercourse with the Nomadic tribes of Asia, Pallas had the best opportunities of observing their capabilities. "The Calmucks," he says, "have a fine nose, a good ear, and an extremely acute eye. On their journeys and military exeditions they often smell out a fire or a camp, and thus procure quarters for the night, or obtain booty. Many of them can distinguish by smelling at the hole of a fox or other animal, whether the creature be there or not. By lying flat, and putting their ear to the ground, they can catch at a great distance the noise of horses, of a flock, or of a single strayed animal. But nothing is so surprising as the perfection of their eyes, and the extraordinary distance at which they often perceive, from inconsiderable heights, small objects, such as the rising dust caused by cattle or horsemen; more particularly as the undulation of the boundless steppes, or plains, and the vapours which rise from and float upon them in warm weather, render things very obscure. In the expedition which the Torgot Vicechan Uaschi led against the Kubanians, the Calmuck force would certainly have missed the enemy, if a common Calmuck had not perceived, at the estimated distance of thirty versts, the smoke and dust of the hostile army, and pointed it out to other equally experienced

eyes, when the commander, Colonel Kischinskoi, could discern nothing with a good glass. They pursue lost or stolen cattle, or game, by the track for miles over deserts. Kirgises, or even Russians, in the wild parts of the empire, are equally able to follow and discriminate tracks by the eye. This, indeed, is not difficult on soft ground, or over snows; but it requires great practice and skill to choose the right out of several intermingled traces, to follow it over loose sand or snow, not to loose it in marshes or deep grass, but rather to judge from the direction of the grass, or from the depth of the print in snow or sand, how long it has been made."*

In civilized as well as savage life, a considerable degree of acuteness in some of the natural senses is often acquired by use. Mariners, it is well known, acquire a wonderful power of vision, by directing the eye habitually to distant objects on the horizon, while as Dr. Smith remarks, "men of letters who live much in their closets, and have seldom occasion to look at very distant objects, are seldom far-sighted." "It is often astonishing to a landsman to observe with what precision a sailor can distinguish in the offing, not only the appearance of a ship, which is altogether invisible to a landsman, but the number of her masts, the direction of her course, and the rate of her sailing. If she is a ship of his acquaintance, he frequently can tell her name before the landsman has

See Lawrence's Lectures on Zoology, &c. chap. vi. where the above passages from the works of Collins, Barrow, and Pallas are cited.

been able to discover even the appearance of a ship.”*

It will, I think, hardly be contended that the preceding examples of acuteness in the natural senses, whether in man or in the brute, belong to Instinct as it is above explained. Boyle, I observe, makes a clear distinction between Instinct and what he calls a tenderness or quickness of sense." And from all that has been said, I think there is ground for such a distinction.

SECT. III.

On some singular acts of the lower Animals, particularly their migrations from one place to another.

It is well known that different tribes of animals are endowed with a sense or faculty which enables them to steer their course with astonishing precision from one place to another, through trackless regions of the air, and even of the ocean, and through strange and unknown countries. For it is a sense common to birds and fishes as well as to beasts.

We have numerous anecdotes of dogs and cats, which, after being conveyed to distant places, have found their way home, and often by a different route, or through a country they had never traversed before.

* Dr. Adam Smith on the External Senses.

The carrier pigeon affords a striking example of the facility and speed with which this bird pursues its flight from one place to another: but some might explain the fact by referring it to a degree of instruction, and by supposing that its extensive view would aid the bird in fixing on objects by which its course might be directed.

But that an ass, a serpent, and a sheep,―animals one would suppose to be naturally dull and stupid, in regard to their power of outward observation,-should each be able to transport itself through a strange country to a considerable distance, and to reach some known spot, with scarcely any delay, is hardly to be accounted for on any natural principles.

Dr. Good entertains a question whether there be any other than the five senses common to man and the higher classes of animals; and remarks, "that we occasionally meet with peculiarities of sensation that can hardly be resolved into any of them. Thus, the bat appears to be sensible of the presence of external objects and obstructions that are neither seen, smelt, heard, touched, nor tasted: for it will cautiously avoid them, when all the senses are purposely closed up. And hence many naturalists have ascribed a sixth sense to this animal. It is equally difficult," he adds, "by any of the known senses of fishes or birds, to account for the accuracy with which their migratory tribes are capable of steering their annual course through the depths of the ocean or the trackless regions of the atmosphere,