FACULTIES OF THE MIND. 257 



Perhaps the most singular attribute of this desirje is ex- 

 hibited in the facility with which many animals, when trans- 

 ported from their usual haunts, can find out the proper di- 

 rection by which to return. The horse, the ass, and the cat, 

 among quadrupeds, have been known to exhibit very re- 

 markable instances of this power of discovering home*. 

 Among birds, the pigeon has long been celebrated for this 

 quality, and frequent and successful attempts have been 

 made to render it useful to man. A pigeon has been fre- 

 quently taken to a distance ; and, after a letter has been tied 

 under its wing, and the bird then let loose, it has rapidly re- 

 turned with the despatches. Attention to all the qualities 



* In the " Introduction to Entomology," by KIRBY and SPENCE, vol. ii. 

 p. 502. the following curious example of this facility of finding home, is 

 communicated on the authority of Lieutenant Alderman, Royal Engineers, 

 who was personally acquainted with the facts. 



" In March 1816, an ass, the property of Captain Dundas, R. N., then at 

 Malta, was shipped on board the Ister frigate, Captain Forrest, bound 

 from Gibraltar for that island. The vessel having struck on some sands off 

 the Point de Gat, at some distance from the shore, the ass was thrown over- 

 board to give it a chance of swimming to land, a poor one, for the sea was 

 running so high, that a boat which left the ship was lost. A few days after- 

 wards, however, when the gates of Gibraltar were opened in the morning, 

 the ass presented himself for admittance, and proceeded to the stable of Mr 

 Weeks, a merchant, which he had formerly occupied, to the no small sur- 

 prise of this gentleman, who imagined that, from some accident, the animal 

 had never been shipped on board the Ister. On the return of this vessel to 

 repair, the mystery was explained ; and it turned out, that Valiante, (as the 

 ass was called,) had not only swam safely to shore, but, without guide, com- 

 pass or travelling-map, had found his way from Point de Gat to Gibraltar, 

 a distance of more than two hundred miles, through a mountainous and intri- 

 cate country, intersected by streams, which he had never traversed before, 

 and in so short a period, that he could not have made one false turn. His 

 not having been stopped on the road, was attributed to the circumstance 

 of his having been formerly used to whip criminals upon, which was indi- 

 cated to the peasants, who have a superstitious horror of such asses, by the 

 holes in hi* ears, to which the persons flogged were tied." 



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