HISTORICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF HOMING. 31 



HOMING IN OTHER VERTEBRATES. 



Of homing in mammals little is known. We have a series of anecdotes in 

 the literature containing probably somewhat more than a grain of truth.* 

 We give below some of the material that has been sent to us personally from 

 "animal lovers" over the country. We give these records for what they are 

 worth. 



The following incidents have been related concerning mammals: 



(1) In May I sent my coach-dog (3 years of age) to Northampton, Massachusetts, 50 

 miles away. He went by carriage with my wife to Brattleboro, Vermont, 12 miles distant, 

 and from there they took the train at S"" 30" p. m., in a hard rain. A closed carriage took 

 them from the station in Northampton, where they arrived at 11 p. m. Saturday. On 

 Monday at about 3 p. m. the dog disappeared and on Thursday about 3 p. m. he walked 

 into our house, hav-iag been on the road 3 days. The last 12 miles he has covered a good 

 many times, as he always goes when I drive. He evidently covered more than 50 miles, for 

 he was seen on Tuesday near Amherst, which is not on the direct route. 



(2) [A correspondent] raised a dog, crossed with hound and pointer, and littered in 

 Lawrence, ^^^len a year old he took the young dog to Boston, got on board of a sailing- 

 vessel, went by sea and river to Bangor, Maine, drove 40 miles into the woods at Cleveland's 

 Camp, and hunted there two weeks, the dog proving to be a great success for quick, fast runs 

 and returns to camp. After the hunting was over, and while on his back trip to Bangor, 

 the dog jumped from the wagon into the bushes, having heard or smelled a deer, and went 

 off on a hot chase. The boats ran only once in two weeks, so that, much as he valued the 

 dog, it was necessarj' to go on. He took the boat at Bangor, returned by river and sea to 

 Boston and back to Lawrence. About 2 weeks afterward the dog crawled into his yard, 

 footsore and half starved, but safe at home and glad to get back. 



(3) Some 16 or 18 years ago a young man brought to this place from his, and their, former 

 home in Indiana two dogs of the greyhound type. Not long after they arrived here they 

 disappeared, and in 6 weeks or so one of them arrived at his former home in Indiana, and a 

 couple of weeks later the other one got back there. The distance is over 700 mUes. 



(4) I spent my vacation the past summer at ray mother's, 3 miles from Siler City, North 

 Carolina. My brother, who Uved at SUer City, had a 3-months-old caU which he wanted to 

 pasture at my mother's farm. Accordingly the calf was brought along the road from the 

 town. The next day the animal got out of the open gate and returned home. I followed 

 its trail — it had recently rained. The calf first took almost a bee-line for its home; crossed 

 a small ditch, then came a large ditch, which it wandered down some distance, but returned 

 and crossed near its direct hne. This was at a distance of a quarter of a mile from the road by 

 which it had been delivered, and aU the space is covered by thick forest. When the calf 

 struck the main road it proceeded along this to its home. This animal never had been 

 out of its lot until it was brought to my mother's, and yet its sense of direction was so accu- 

 rate that it took a straight hne for home untU it reached the road by which it had been 

 brought. Then it depended upon its memory of the road, although it might have followed 

 a path in a much more direct line. 



One of my mother's neighbors, shortly after the war, moved into the State of Tennessee, 

 500 miles away. A dog was taken along. One day the animal was missing, and, a few 

 weeks after, it turned up at its old home. 



(5) I have a coUie a httle more than 2 years old. We took him with us to our camp 

 at Point au Baril, Canada. The dog had hved in Avondale, a city suburb, all his Ufe, 

 and knew absolutely nothing of anj^thing more than the ordinary suburban streets and the 

 neighboring country fields. Our camp is on an island in the midst of a great archipelago. 

 Every summer the people who have gone with us to the camp lose their way because the 

 islands so closely resemble one another and are so bewildering. The dog made himself 

 perfectly at home on our island, and although he had never swnim before, he now learned 



♦Observations on the homing of animals .similar to those above may be found in the Revue 

 Scientifique, 1S97, made by Dusolier, p. 759, and by Artault, p. 79.3. Scattered through the 

 Revue Scientifique one finds a large number of such anecdotes. 



