290 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 



asses, cows, sheep, goats, and pigs ; but as so many similar 

 cases are already on record, I feel it is needless to add to the 

 number. The remarkable fact is that the animals are able 

 to find their way back over immense distances, even though 

 the outgoing journey has been made at night, or in a closed 

 box ; so that it is truly upon some sense of direction, and 

 not merely upon a memory of landmarks, that they must 

 rely. Moreover, it is certain that in many cases, if not as a 

 o-eneral rule, the animals on their return journey do not 

 traverse the exact route which they had taken in the out- 

 o-oing journey, but take the " bee-line";* so that, for instance, 

 if the out-going journey has been made over two sides of 

 a triangle, the return journey will most probably be made 

 over the third side. One instan^^e, the account of which I 

 have received from a correspondent in Australia, is of suffi- 

 cient interest in this connection to quote. " A pair of horses 

 were sent many hundred miles round the Australian coast by 

 ship ; as they did not like their new quarters, they started 

 back by land ; but after returning 230 miles they were pulled 

 up by a peninsula on the coast, where they were eventually 

 recovered. They did not attempt to retrace their steps to 

 clear this difficulty ."f 



Huddersfield, a distance of two hundred miles. A still more remarkable case, 

 however, was published by Mr. J. B. Andrews in Nature several years ago 

 (vol. viii, p. 6). The Archduchess Marie Regnier passed the winter of 1871-2 

 at the Hotel Victoria, in Mentone, and while there took a fancy to a spaniel 

 belonging to the landlord, M. Milandri. In the spring of 1872 she brought 

 the dog with her by rail to Vienna. Not long afterwards it reappeared at the 

 hotel in Mentone, having thus run a distance of nearly a thousand miles. On 

 arriving it died of fatigue and was buried m the hotel gardens, where a 

 monument now commemorates the performance. Mr. A. W. Howitt writing 

 to Nature from Victoria at about the same time (vol. viii, p. 322) gives a 

 number of cases of horses and cattle finding their way home over greater or 

 less distances, and I specially allude to his communication because he says 

 that in some of the cases the return journey was made after a considerable 

 lapse of time — months and even years. 



* This is an American term which I employ because in itself showing 

 the observed regularity of the fact as regards bees — it being the custom to 

 find wild hives of honey by catching several bees, and letting them go again 

 from different places. The insects under these circumstances make straight 

 for their hive, so that by observing the point where several " bee-lines " 

 intersect, the honey seekers are able to find tbe hive. 



t I may here also quote an observation by Mr. Dar■^^dn to the same effect : — 

 ** I sent a riding-horse by railway from Kent via Yarmouth, to Freshwater Bay, 

 in the Isle of Wight. On the first day that I rode eastward, my horse, when 

 I turned to go home, was very unwilling to return towards his stable, and he 

 several times turned round. This led me to make repeated trials, and every 



