s of birds and
quadrupeds to the condition of one another, their sense of a common
danger, of food supplies, of the direction of home under all
circumstances, point to the possession of a power which is only
rudimentary in us.

Some observers explain these things on the theory that the flocks of
birds have leaders, and that their surprising evolutions are guided by
calls or signals from these leaders, too quick or too fine for our
eyes or ears to catch. I suppose they would explain the movements of
the schools of fish and the simultaneous movements of a large number
of land animals on the same theory. I cannot accept this explanation.
It is harder for me to believe that a flock of birds has a code of
calls or signals for all its evolutions--now right, now left, now
mount, now swoop--which each individual understands on the instant, or
that the hosts of the wild pigeons had their captains and signals,
than to believe that out of the flocking instinct there has grown some
other instinct or faculty, less understood, but equally potent, that
puts all the members of a flock in such complete rapport with one
another that the purpose and the desire of one become the purpose and
the desire of all. There is nothing in this state of things analogous
to a military organization. The relation among the members of the
flock is rather that of creatures sharing spontaneously the same
subconscious or psychic state, and acted upon by the same hidden
influence, in a way and to a degree that never occur among men.

The faculty or power by which animals find the way home over or across
long stretches of country is quite as mysterious and incomprehensible
to us as the spirit of the flock to which I refer. A hive of bees
evidently has a collective purpose and plan that does not emanate from
any single individual or group of individuals, and which is understood
by all without outward communication.

Is there anything which, without great violence to language, may be
called a school of the woods? In the sense in which a playground is a
school--a playground without rules or methods or a director--there is
a school of the woods. It is an unkept, an unconscious school or
gymnasium, and is entirely instinctive. In play the young of all
animals, no doubt, get a certain amount of training and disciplining
that helps fit them for their future careers; but this school is not
presided over or directed by parents, though they sometimes take part
in i