HOMING MAMMALS 143 



And as with serpents and insects, and fishes and 

 batrachians, so it is with birds and mammals, all 

 which when out and away from home on their various 

 quests are, as the poet says of the migrating bird, 

 " lone wanderers, but not lost." There is not a village 

 or hamlet in the kingdom, nor, I imagine, anywhere 

 in the world, where you will not be told strange yet 

 familiar stories of a domestic or pet animal returning 

 from long distances to its old home over ground 

 unknown to it where it could never have memorised 

 the landmarks. Such instances are so common that 

 anyone who thought it worth his while could collect 

 a volume full of them in a few weeks. Even here, 

 in this house in Penzance where I am writing this 

 chapter, two such cases have been related to me of 

 cats; one that was sent away to a distant village in 

 a closed basket and promptly returned to its home 

 here; the other of a cat received here from St. Just, 

 seven miles away over a rough moor, who disappeared 

 on the evening of its arrival and reappeared the very 

 next day at St. Just. Also I have just received from 

 a correspondent in America an extraordinary case 

 of a dog sent by rail and water across the country to 

 a southern State, who soon vanished from his new 

 home to reappear several months later at his old home, 

 800 miles distant. This is an authentic case, and the 

 astonishing thing is that in that immense journey the 

 desire for home, the nostalgia, the impelling force, 

 was not overcome by the difficulties — by hunger 

 and fatigue and the hostility and persecutions met 

 with from man and dogs encountered on the way. 



