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DESIGN IN MIGRATION OF BIRDS AND OTHER ANIMALS 415
§ 84. Design as Witnessed in the Migration of Birds and Other Animals.
It is very difficult, if not indeed impossible, fully to explain the phenomenon of migration. No doubt it is
largely connected with the food supply and, in the case of birds and fishes, with nidification and spawning. The
seasons, the increase of heat or cold, and the velocity or force of the winds are also to be taken into account. The
conditions attending migration are complex, and such as cannot be fully appreciated by the animals which migrate.
The distances covered extend occasionally to hundreds or thousands of miles, and, in not a few instances, the
migrations are made during the night. This is true of large numbers of birds.
Great flights are made by birds in the murky darkness, and fish migrate in shoals into and out of deep water,
where their eyes can be of little or no service. Birds and fishes perform their migrations, as it were, without sight,
and minus a compass. Their landmarks, if they have any, must be few and far between. As they cannot be
credited with a full knowledge of the complicated circamstances which determine their movements, the movements
themselves are not a little mysterious.
Birds reared in certain localities migrate, and in due season return to the place of their birth for nesting and
other purposes. Young salmon, sea-trout, &c., make long journeys down the rivers in which they are hatched to
the sea, where they remain for stated intervals. They attain maturity in the sea, from which they finally emerge
full of spawn. They ascend the parent rivers, and in turn deposit their spawn there, which is hatched out as before.
Young salmon and sea trout which have been artificially marked invariably return to the same rivers. They take
next to no food in the fresh water before spawning, so that the question of food prior to spawning may be largely
eliminated in the migrations of these valuable food fishes. Birds also when rearing their young are indifferent to food.
In considering the subject of migration, one of two things is evident. Either the migrations of animals are
arranged for and are pre-determined, or, in the remote past, the migrations must have been performed intelligently.
This means that the migrating animals understood what they were about,' and that they were largely guided to
their respective destinations by landmarks which are now wholly or in great measure swept away.
It is worse than useless to attempt to explain the phenomenon of migration by the ill-defined and loosely-
employed term instinct, which, in this connection, means nothing. Instinct, moreover, as I show elsewhere
(| 48 of the present work) is, m every instance, preceded by intelhgence. To explain migration, intelHgence,
or its equivalent must be conceded to the parents and to the offspring. If that be withheld, a guiding power has
to be substituted, and that guiding power can only be traced to a First Cause. The intelligence of birds and fishes
(as w^e know them) is limited, and inadequate fully to explain all the pecuHarities of migration. If it accounted
for short journeys made during the day with landmarks as guides it would not accovmt for long journeys made
during the night without landmarks. If, again, the ancient progenitors of birds and fishes were wiser than their
modern progeny, then birds and fishes have not evolved or become more perfect. On the contrary they have retro-
gressed. This affords an argument for the creation of types as contra-distinguished from a continuous evolution
from lower to higher forms, from the monad to the man. On the whole a First Cause and design furnish the more
feasible explanation of the migratory habit.
One can understand how animals pressed by hunger because of the failure of the food supply in certain regions
at certain times make short journeys in dayhght, but when they make long journeys in the darkness the explanation
is by no means on the surface. Animals are no doubt endowed with powers not vouchsafed to man. Eels which
are taken out of the water, if left to themselves, immediately make for it. Young turtles hatched in the hot sand
make straight for the water even when turned about and placed with the head away from it. Land crabs often
make long journeys to moist regions with apparently nothing to guide them, and homing pigeons seldom make a
mistake in direction, and frequently travel incredibly long distances. Young ducks reared by hens make for the
pond almost as soon as hatched. Chickens scarcely out of the shell begin to peck, and pick up food before they
can have any idea of what food means.
Dogs and cats removed by train or boats fifty or more miles distant very frequently return to their original
homes, travelling through unknown territory as quickly as if they knew every foot of the way. In like manner
bees, however devious their course when leaving the hive, as a rule, return to it in a straight hne—hence the
phrase " bee-line."
If, however (and here comes the crux of the matter) animals can perform, more or less unerringly, long journeys
without apparent landmarks and even in the darkness, it follows that the guiding power is not wholly within them-
selves, and that in their migTations they are carrying out a design which they can, at best, only partly realise.
1 Many are of opinion that old, intelligent, sterile birds act as leaders in migratory flight, and direct the movements of the younger and less
well-informed birds in their protracted journeys. Not a few are of opinion that migration is determined by the velocity of the wind. No
migrations are performed where the speed of the wind e.xceeds from thirty-tive to forty miles an hour.