The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1877-1885, 1880-07-15

In the current number of the Ppuiar
Science Wonthy there is very interesting
article, which details the experiments made
by certain Ohio physicians to ascertain
whether the faculty which some animals
possess of returning to their home by anea
ly direct course after being carried a great
distance by a circuitous route is to be attri-
buted to scent, memory, or to any other in
telligible cause. Everybody. Of course, is
aware OF the fact that a cat may be put into
a bag and taken never SO far away from its
accustomed hearth, and by never so round
about a journey, and yet urn up again IN
due time at the old place Its ability to get
back being apparently limited only by Ill
superable physical obstacles. The subject
of the Ohio experimenters was a dog. The
way they went to work and the result is thus
described:
A dog was made insensible with ether at
Cincinnati, put into a wicker basket, stall
ted on a train of the Cincinnati Southern
Railroad, first southwest to Danville june
ton, thence east to Crab Orchard, and inal-
ly northeast to a hunting rendezvous near
Berea, in Madison county. This circuitous
route was taken because on a former acca-
sion, when the dog had returned from a
point 100 miles distant from his home, it
was suspected that he might have found his
way back by simply reversing his course on
the railway by which he had come. At
Berea the dog was shut up securely over
night and we'll fed. The next morning he
was taken out to clearing, on the top Of a
grassy knob at some distance from the rail
way, and was let loose. Without any pre-
liminary survey he skunk off into a %ravine,
scrambled up the opposite bank, and struck
first on a trot and then a swift gallop, not
toward Crab Orchard, i. e., southeast, but
due north, in a bee line for Cincinnati. He
ran not like an animal that lost its way, but
like a horse on a tramway,' straight
ahead with his nose we'll up, as if he were
following an air line toward a visable goal.
He made a short detour to the left to avoid
a lateral %ravine, but further up he resumed
his original course, leaped a rail fence and
went headlong into a coppice of cedar
bushes, where they finally lost sight of him.
The report of the eXperlmenters, was for
warded to the owner by rail, and the after
noon of the next day after receiving this re-
port the owner met the dog on the street in
Cincinnati, wet, full of burrs remOrse, and
apparently ashamed of his hardness"
There could nave been no act OF memory
In this case, and it is hardly reasOnab BILE to
suppose that the sense of smell, notwlth
standing the present odoriferous character OF
the Little Miami Canal in Cincinnati, could
have guided the dog back 80 miles, in as
| nearly a right line as he could make, to the
| point he started from. The writer OF the
| article in the Monthly ventures no explana-
ton of the problem beyond the vague sug-,
| g~estion that the dog obeyed a sense OF
orieptation.' The sense DIR. Oswald
says, it possessed by pigeons. crows, falcons
and migratory birds in a transcendent de-
gree; also, by all migratory fish and rep
tiles-shad, surgeons. funny fish and marine
tortoises. Several remarkable instances are
given of the exercises of the strange faculty.
The art of retracing a voluntarily chosen
route is not so marvellous. But reptiles
even have crossed unknown seas by the aid
of this geographical second sight, or inner
compass" How they do it nobody knows,
nor pretends TO know.