WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



and exhibiting, as only a dog can, his great joy 

 at finding his master/' Inquiry showed that the 

 dog had come aboard a Dundee collier from a ship 

 hailing from Calcutta. 



Comparing all these examples and many others 

 — for hundreds, almost, of similar cases with vari- 

 ous animals might be cited — certain general facts 

 appear. 



First, incidentally, brutes equally with men be- 

 come homesick. Those that stay away, as well 

 as those that return to their former homes, show 

 this very plainly, and often pitiably. This feeling 

 is the motive which leads them to undergo perils 

 and hardships that no other emotion would prompt 

 them to undertake or enable them to endure. But 

 it is the most thoroughly domesticated and most in- 

 telligent breeds of animals that this homesickness 

 attacks the most severely ; while, correlativelj'', the 

 most difficult feats of finding their way home are 

 manifested by the same class. It is the finely bred 

 horses, the carefully reared pigeons, the highly 

 educated pointers, fox-hounds, and collies that re- 

 turn from the longest distances and over the great- 

 est obstacles. 



This would seem to indicate that the homing 

 ability is largely the result of education ; whatever 



235 



