countries at times when there is still no scarcity of food for them here,
and when the temperature is considerably warmer than it will be when they
return to us. The same holds good of the time when animals begin to
prepare their winter quarters, which beetles constantly do during the
very hottest days of autumn. When swallows and storks find their way
back to their native places over distances of hundreds of miles, and
though the aspect of the country is reversed, we say that this is due to
the acuteness of their perception of locality; but the same cannot be
said of dogs, which, though they have been carried in a bag from one
place to another that they do not know, and have been turned round and
round twenty times over, have still been known to find their way home.
Here we can say no more than that their instinct has conducted them—that
the clairvoyance of the unconscious has allowed them to conjecture their
way. {119a}
Before an early winter, birds of passage collect themselves in
preparation for their flight sooner than usual; but when the winter is
going to be mild, they will either not migrate at all, or travel only a
small distance southward. When a hard winter is coming, tortoises will
make their burrows deeper. If wild geese, cranes, etc., soon return from
the countries to which they had betaken themselves at the beginning of
spring, it is a sign that a hot and dry summer is about to ensue in those
countries, and that the drought will prevent their being able to rear
their young. In years of flood, beavers construct their dwellings at a
higher level than usual, and shortly before an inundation the field-mice
in Kamtschatka come out of their holes in large bands. If the summer is
going to be dry, spiders may be seen in May and April, hanging from the
ends of threads several feet in length. If in winter spiders are seen
running about much, fighting with one another and preparing new webs,
there will be cold weather within the next nine days, or from that to
twelve: when they again hide themselves there will be a thaw. I have no
doubt that much of this power of prophesying the weather is due to a
perception of certain atmospheric conditions which escape ourselves, but
this perception can only have relation to a certain actual and now
present condition of the weather; and what can the impression made by
this have to do with their idea of the weather that will ensue? No one
will ascribe to animals a power of prognosticating the weather months
beforehand by means of inferences drawn logically from a series of
observations, {119b} to the extent of being able to foretell floods. It
is far more probable that the power of perceiving subtle differences of
actual atmospheric condition is nothing more than the sensual perception
which acts as motive—for a motive must assuredly be always present—when
an instinct comes into operation. It continues to hold good, therefore,
that the power of foreseeing the weather is a case of unconscious
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