WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



and to profit by these would have required 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 quite unaccountable at first thought. 

 An extremely instructive series of authentic ex- 

 amples of this were published in successive num- 

 bers of that excellent London newspaper, The Field. 

 The discussion was begun by a somewhat aggres- 

 sive article by Mr. Tegetmeier, in which he -ex- 

 pressed the opinion that most of such stories cur- 

 rent were "nonsense/' and cordially 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 mem- 

 ories. The distance was not great; they obtained 

 a knowledge of the routes, and took their depart- 

 ure. "Very interesting," replied a correspondent, 

 " but no argument against another cat or dog home- 

 returning twenty or thirty miles across a strange 

 district by means of instinct." And as evidence 

 of his conclusion that "there is an attribute of 

 animals, neither scent, sight, nor memory, which 



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