18701882] HOMING EXPERIMENTS 385 



To J. H. Fabre. 1 Letter 297 



Down, Feb. 2Oth, 1880. 



I thank you for your kind letter, and am delighted that 

 you will try the experiment of rotation. It is very curious 

 that such a belief should be held about cats in your country, 2 

 I never heard of anything of the kind in England. I was 

 led, as I believe, to think of the experiment from having read 

 in Wrangel's Travels in Siberia 3 of the wonderful power 

 which the Samoyedes possess of keeping their direction in 

 a fog whilst travelling in a tortuous line through broken ice. 

 With respect to cats, I have seen an account that in Belgium 

 there is a society which gives prizes to the cat which can 

 soonest find its way home, and for this purpose they are 

 carried to distant parts of the city. 



Here would be a capital opportunity for trying rotation. 



I am extremely glad to hear that your book will probably 

 be translated into English. 



P.S. I shall be much pleased to hear the result of your 

 experiments. 



To J. H. Fabre. Letter 298 



Down, Jan. 2ist, 1881. 



I am much obliged for your very interesting letter. Your 

 results appear to me highly important, as they eliminate one 

 means by which animals might perhaps recognise direction ; 

 and this, from what has been said about savages, and from 

 our own consciousness, seemed the most probable means. If 

 you think it worth while, you can of course mention my name 

 in relation to this subject. 



Should you succeed in eliminating a sense of the magnetic 



1 J. H. Fabre is best known for his Souvenirs Entomologiques, in 

 No. VI. of which he gives a wonderfully vivid account of his hardy and 

 primitive life as a boy, and of his early struggles after a life of culture. 

 A letter to M. Fabre is given in Life and Letters ', III., p. 220, in 

 which the suggestion is made of rotating the insect before a " homing " 

 experiment occurs. 



2 M. Fabre had written from Serignan, Vaucluse : " Parmi la popu- 

 lation des paysans de mon village, 1'habitude est de faire tourner dans 

 un sac le chat que Ton se propose de porter ailleurs, et dont on veut 

 empecher le retour. J'ignore si cette pratique obtient du succes." 



3 Admiral Ferdinand Petrovich von Wrangell, " Le Nord de la Siberie, 

 Voyage parmi les Peuplades de la Russie asiatique, etc." Paris, 1843. 



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