The Russellville Democrat., 1880-08-26
A CAPITAL DOG STORY.
The Pointer, Hector, Who Knew His Way Home and Could Not be Deceived
 by Arts of Men,

published III The Pop,ll.:TT iS5caence Monthly, nr EsiiiiS ELsiiS !. Oswald tells the following strange story: e
 | We often hear of the wondrous saga aclty-generally ascribed to memory or acuteness of scent-which enables a dog to find his way home by unknown roads even from a considerable distance I think it can be practically demonstrated that this faculty has nothing to do with memory and very little with scent, l except in a quite novel sense of the word.
 Last fall my neighbor, Dr. L. G., of Cincinnati, O., exchanged some sub urban property for a house and office near the city hospital, and at the same | time discharged number of his four | footed retainers. A litter of poodle puppies were banished to Covington, Ky, across the rlver, and two English pointers, like tho hlack friar in the halls of Amundeville. declined sto be driven away. He returned by ways and means known to himself alone, once rom Portsmouth and twice from Lucasville, l in Scioto county, the last time in a | blinding snow-storms and under circum- stances that led his owner to believe | that he must have steered by memory rather than scent. But how had he managed it the first time? The matter was discussed at reunion of amateur sportsmen and naturalists, and as a crucial test that the dog be eholroformed and sent by night train to certain farm near Somerset, Ky, t160 miles from Cincinnati); if he found his way back he could not have done it. by memory.
 The doctor objected to chloroform, re. membering that dogs and cats often for get to awake from anathetic slumbers; but finally Hector was drugged with a dose of Bccker's elixir tan alcoholic so- lution of morphine and sent to Somer- set in charge of a freight-train conductor. The conductor reports that his passenger groaned in his stupor Hike a Christian in whisky fitp at length relieved him self by stretching, and went to sleep again. But in the twilight of the next moraing, while the train was taking in wood at Kings mountain, eighteen miles north of Somerset, the dog escaped from the caboose and staggered toward the dpot in dazed way. Two break men started npursuit, but, seeing them, the dog gathered hirnelf up, bolted across pasture, and disappeared in the morning mist. At 10 a. m., on the fol- lowing day he turned up at Cincinnati, having run a distance of one hun dred and forty-two miles in twenty eight hours.
 Still the test was not decisive. The dog might have recovered from his lethargy in time to ascertain the general direction of his journey. and returned to the northern terminus by simply fol- | lowing the railroad track backward. The projector of the experiment., therefore, proposed a new test, with different am- endments, to be tried on his next hunt 1 ing trip to Kentucky.
 Of the last day of January the dog was sent across the river. and, nem. cos, the experimenter fuddIed him with ether and put him in wicket basket after bandaging his nose with rag that had been scented with a husky perfume. | Starting with evening train of the Gin cinnati Southern railway, he took his patient southwest to Danville Junction, thence cast to Crab Orchard, and finally northeast to hunting rendezvous near Berea in Madison county. Here the much-traveled quadruped was treated to a handsome supper, but had to pass the | night III a dark toolshed. The next morning they lugged him out to clear | ing behind the farm, and slipped his lash on top of grassy knob, at some distance from the next large wood. The dog cringed and fawned at the feet of his travelling companion, as if so concili- ate his consent to the meditated enter prise, and then slunk off into ravine, scrambled up the opposite bank, and scampered away at trot first, and by l o,,I htt at frU arI Ir,l !. orchard. i.e., southeast, but due north toward Morgan's ridge and Boonsboro- | in bee line to Cincinnati. They saw him cross stuble-feld, not bit like an animal that has lost its way and has to turn right and left for landmarks, but Hike horse on a tramway," straight ahead, with his nose well up, as if he were following an airline toward visi- ble goal He made short detour to the left, to avoid lateral rayine, but | further up he resumed his original course | leaping rail fence, and went headlong into a coppice of cedar bushes where | they finally lost sight of him.
 | A report to the above effect, duly countersigncd by the Berea witnesses, reached the dogs owner on February 4, and on the afternoon of the following day, Hector met his master on the steps, wet and full of burrs and remorse, evi- dently ashamed of his tardiness. That settled the memory question. Till they had reached Crab orchard the dog had been under the full influence of ether, and the last thing he could possibly know from memory was a misleading fact, namely. that they had brought him from southwesterly direction. Between Borea and Cincinnati he had to cross two broad rivers and three steep noun | tam ranges, and had to pass by or ' through five good-sized tow ms, the center of network of bewildering roads and 1 by-roads. He had never been in that part of Kentucky before, nor even with in sixty miles of. Berea.
 The inclination of the watershed might have guided him to the Kentucky river and by and by back the Ohio but far below Cincinnati, and by an ex. haustive circuitous route. The weather after a few days of warm rains, had turned clear and cool, so that no thermal data could have suggested the fact that he was two degrees south of his home
 The wind on that morning, varied from west to southwest, and, if it waited taint of city atmosphere across the l Kentucky river mountains, it must have been from the direction of Frankfort or Louisville.
 4 Secretary with Two Elephants.
 Philadelphia Record.
 There is only one member of the Cab,
 inet now in Washington. The faithful