206 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING. 
quite as fully due to their superior eyesight as to their 
strong sense of locality. I have also seen mules following 
the trail of a pack-train a few hours in advance, almost 
wholly by scenting; but the two runaways before mention- 
ed had no other conceivable help in laying their course 
than some distant mountain-tops north and east of (and 
hence behind) them, and to profit by these would have re- 
quired a sort of mental triangulation. 
But the most common instances of homing ability are 
presented by our domestic pets, which often come back to 
us when we have parted with them, in a way qnite unac- 
countable at first thought. An extremely instructive series 
of authentic examples of this were published in successive 
numbers of that excellent newspaper, the London Field. 
The discussion was begun by a somewhat aggressive article 
by Mr. Tegetmeier, in which he expressed the opinion that 
most of such stories current were “nonsense,” and cordial- 
ly assigned to the regions of the fabulous those narratives 
which seemed to attribute this power to a special faculty 
possessed by the animal, instancing himself two cases where 
a dog and a cat found their way home, as he very justly 
supposes, by using their memories. The distance was not 
great; they obtained a knowledge of the routes, and took 
their departure. ‘ Very interesting,’ replied a correspond- 
