“ Homing” Tales. 57 
surprised to see the cat come in one day about a month after- 
wards and take up its quarters at once, and go mewing about 
as if it knew the place well, and, besides some of the neighbours 
recognised it at once as the little tabby that used to belong to 
the Smiths, who have gone to live at . ten miles off. And 
I can assure you,” &c. This happens to be one of the samples 
in my note-book, and many a change could be rung on it. 
It is usually most difficult to establish the first essential 
point, the identity of the cat; and if we can attain that with 
reasonable certainty, a host of other difficulties and doubts 
present themselves. One may at the outset dismiss, as not 
worth inquiry, any case where the narrator, whether at first or 
secondhand, becomes annoyed at cross-examination. When 
a person cannot distinguish between your implied doubt of his 
knowledge and an attack on his veracity, that person’s habits 
of mind are assuredly not calculated to inspire confidence in his 
capacity to make accurate observations on his own account, 
or faithfully to convey those of others on a point in natural 
history, surrounded by so many difficulties. On the other hand, 
a steady cross-examination, when submitted to by the examiner 
in a spirit of anxiety to arrive at the truth of the matter under 
inquiry, will place us in a position to determine whether it is 
possible to reach the facts and then found some conclusion on 
them. I must, however, remark that even this elementary form 
of the scientific spirit is not, in my experience, commonly met 
with; whence it becomes a tedious, and too often an abortive, 
effort to clear away the palpable rubbish and the manifold 
uncertainties which encumber stories so easily told or repeated 
by persons devoid of any critical capacity, and even unsuspi- 
cious of the treacherous character of their own memory. In 
cross-examination these weaknesses come out, accompanied by 
irritable asseveration of the narrator’s credibility. It is then 
best to pass to some irrelevant remark on the state of the 
weather, and leave that interesting story to be told to a more 
confiding auditor. 
While I guard against committing myself to any assertion of 
