Deficient in the Sense of Smell. 53 
because, so far as I can ascertain, there is no published ex- 
pression of the writer’s disposition to accept Mr. Wallace’s 
explanation of the extraordinary homing faculty which has 
been credited to animals. “ 
As a supplement to the above, I have since repeated the trial 
with two other cats, and varied it in this way. Several pieces 
of red herring and fried cod were placed under an inverted 
saucer, on the floor of a room where a hungry cat was shut up, 
and others concealed under the corners of the hearthrug. On 
liberating her in half-an-hour, not one piece had been touched. 
On letting the dog in, pieces of meat having been substituted 
for the fish, he first turned the saucer over, and afterwards 
scraped up the hearthrug and found the remaining pieces, 
without the least hint or direction from me. On another 
oceasion, before I sat down to dinner, I put half-a-dozen scraps 
of meat on the floor, covered by pieces of paper about four inches 
square, forming nearly a circle. The tom cat came in as usual, 
sat down amidst the pieces, taking great care not to tread on 
any of them, and picked up and ate little pieces which I threw 
down, without suspecting the papers to conceal food. 
If the cat’s sense of smell is so deficient as this, one might 
naturally wonder how the animal becomes a thief, so expert, 
and so much dreaded by all housewives. In the first place, it is 
entirely devoid of conscience; in prowling about seeking what 
it may devour, neither the shelf, the larder, the dairy, the 
rabbit-hutch, nor the bird-cage, is sacred in its eyes, as they 
would be to the moral sense of any fairly well-fed dog. All in 
the stilly night the tempter enters into pussy and she steals off 
on her foraging expeditions, in all probability guided by day- 
light reminiscences of the place where food is deposited, or the 
pet canary hangs. In the morning, we find her dozing away the 
night’s debauch on cold partridge or warm canary, with a placid 
countenance betokening a mind that knows neither retrospection 
nor remorse. : 
The (as I believe indubitable) obtuseness of the sense of smell 
in the domestic cat seems to place Mr. Wallace’s theory out 
