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