54 The Carntvora. 
of court, depending as it does on the exercise of this sense 
in a more than ordinarily acute form. But whereas of all our 
domesticated animals, the cat perhaps has been credited with 
the most extraordinary performances in the way of returning 
to a home from which it has been taken in a closed convey- 
ance, it may be well to examine the case with regard to this 
animal. Some people are under the impression—it is rather 
a conviction with them which they never think of questioning 
—that neither time nor distance presents any obstacle to the 
cat when it has determined to revisit its old quarters. This 
has been made the subject of direct experiment—the only 
method by which unknown or uncertain elements can be elimi- 
nated from the problem. 
The wife of a gentleman living at Hampstead gave me the 
following account of her husband’s short way with cats. He 
possessed avery carefully kept garden, which, being the only 
considerable open space in the near neighbourhood, afforded a 
delectable playground and battlefield for the feline inhabitants 
of that charming suburb, to the detriment of the choice flowers 
he cultivated. Happening to be almost as averse to the de- 
struction of animal life as a Hindoo, he caught them in wooden 
traps, and drove out with his captives towards Hendon and 
Finchley, where they were liberated, not more than two or three 
miles from home. This method of “transportation” was 
adopted throughout the summer, and at least a score of his 
enemies were thus afforded an opportunity of testifying to their 
reputation for finding their way home. Not one of these, so far 
as he could ascertain, ever revisited his garden, and though the 
ownership of many of them was well known to his gardener, it 
was not discovered that any of the lost ones regained their 
homes, where they must have been seen by the man. The best 
evidence of the success of the method of transportation was to 
be found in the complaints of the owners of the trespassers, who 
were not long in doubt as to the author of their losses. 
Unless we suppose all these cats to have met with an untimely 
end while making their way home over so short a distance, 
