THE ROCK-DOVE. 77 



sages at sea, where there are no marks to guide them, and 

 the turning which they must make in cross winds, is one of 

 those instincts which we must admire but cannot understand. 

 That they do in so far depend on sight, would appear from 

 the fact that they are often bewildered in fogs ; but still sight, 

 in so far as we can judge of it, is not sufficient to explain the 

 whole. We get to a place by experimental knowledge of the 

 intermediate space, or by information which answers the same 

 purpose; but pigeons, and indeed many animals, have, at 

 least to the extent of their usual journeyings, an instinctive 

 knowledge of the place of their abode, without any reference 

 to the space that lies between. There are authenticated 

 instances of dogs and of donkeys returning on foot for hundreds 

 of miles, though the former had been removed in a close car- 

 riage, and the other had been on board a vessel which was 

 wrecked. I knew an instance of a bullock that was driven 

 west and south at least forty miles to a fair, sold there, and 

 taken to his new pasture, fifteen miles from the old one, and 

 with a wide and deep estuary of a river between. His new 

 companions, as is very often the case with cattle for a time, 

 shunned him, or rather combined to expel him. The pasture 

 was on the shore of the estuary : he stood there some time 

 nosing the wind ; then dashed into the tide, although the 

 ripple was high, swam gallantly though, and trotted off to 

 his former pasture and companions, lowing as he went. 

 Sight could do nothing in that case, because there were high 

 grounds on the opposite side of the estuary, which limited the 

 view to not more than one mile out of fifteen. When these 

 things happen with quadrupeds, we may cease to wonder at 1 

 though we must on that account admire the more, the feats 

 that are performed by carrier pigeons; and which are often at 

 least sixty miles an hour. What messengers the swift-winged 

 migratory birds would be, if we knew how to press them into 

 our service! A discovery made in Central Africa, might be 



