Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1873-12-26
Animals Returning to Their Accus-
toned Haunts.

THE Boston TrdUeller notes that the sim
gular facility with which certain animals
return TO their accustomed abodes after
having been taken away to strange and
distant places, has always been subject
OF wonder. No philosophical reason has
ever yet been assigned for the faculty, a
power by which animals are thus enabled
to find their way home without any guide
other than pure instinct, or some superior
and still more mysterious faculty. The
cat though carried from home to great
distance by tortuous path, and so con.
cealed as TO have seen nothing on the
ground over which il was taken, as not
even to know the direction of its journey
will turn its steps, in the first moment of
its freedom, to its wonted haunts. Migra-
tory birds, after months of absence from
their native places, will return with fault
less certainty to build their nest in the
same neighborhood, and upon the same
cherished tree. The means by which this
is accomplished is beyond human reason
or knowledge. The intuitive power which
it involves battles scientific Investigation,
and it has not entered into the imagina.
tion of man to conceive of the
physical or soul capacity with
which animals are thus endowed.
A late number of the Bulletin de Ia
S0ciete Royal Pr0tectrtce des Animdur,
published at Brussels, contains some an
ecdotes illustrative of this inexplicable
faculty of animals, which are worth no.
ticing for the benefit of American readers
who are curious in such matters. A dog
was sent, as a present to a friend, dis
tance of twenty-five miles. He was con-
veyed in closed basket in covered car
| riage. On the night of his arrival at his
place of destination the dog cOntrived to
make his escape, and before noon the next
day he had returned to the point of de-
parture, although the route traversed a
chain of steep and rugged mountains.
Two or three cattle disappeared one
night from large herd that was being
driven from the mountains in Wales to
the London market, and it was supposed
that they had been stolen. Five days af-
terward the stray cattle appeared at the
place in the mountains from which they
had been driven, having travelled in re-
| turning to their first love, at least $50
miles. The incident is not merely veri-
fication of Scripture, that the OK knoweth
his owner as we'll as the ass his masters
crib, but it is complete retutation of the
proverbial libel against the intelligence
of that patient and useful animal.
| Crabs, II is well known, are generally
taken to market alive, being confined in
| boxes, in mass. The fishermen in Fal-
mouth, in England, are accustomed to col
lect their crabs jointly, or at least to throw
them into one mass for transportation TO
market. They take care, however, to mark
the shells, by branding them with hot
iron in such a manner as that each one
may know the lot which belongs to him.
When thus marked they are packed in
boxes ana conveyed to market in boats,
some ten miles from the rocky clefts
whence they are taken. In one instance,
when boat load thus marked and packed
had reached Falmouth harbor within a
mile or two, one of the boxes was broken,
and considerable number of the impris'
oned crabs made their escape simultane-
ously and, it would seem, by con.
certed arrangement. Plunging into
the water, the happy fugitives
made their way home 70 their
ward, the fishermen found many of them,
recognizing them by the brand of slavery
upon their backs They had travelled ten
miles, at least, ON their homeward jour-
ney. 1t was necessary, in the first place,
that they should find their way from the
boat to the entrance of the haTbor of Fal-
mouth, from whence they directed their
steps to the rocks of Cape Lizard. But
how they should have known whether to
turn to the right or to the left, is the
greatest mystery of this extraordinary
feat How they got over the distance
which separated them from their rocky
habitats, is less mysterious, for they were
probably of the species called Soldier"
crabs, and accustomed, ii may be, to long
marches. Ii Is not uncommon In the
West Indies, where they abound, to find
them upon foraging expeditions six or
eightmiles from the shore.
The most remarkable instance of the
mysterious and unerring faculty by which
animals, under all conceivable circum.
stances, are enabled to find their way
home through strange districts of coun-
try and from great distances, remains to
be related The Archduke and the Arch.
duchess of Austria spent . portion Of