The suburban citizen., 1900-04-14
THE HomlNc INSTINCT:
Ability Of Various Birds and Animals 10
Find Their Way Home.

Ability OF Various Birds and Animals 30
Find Their Way Home.
The homing instinct develops in
young ANIMALS almost as early as the
desire for food. In the wild state it
is a necessity, since without it the
young could never keep in touch with
herd or pack. Even after centuries
of domeslicatiou it is still acute.
Witness this tale Of little pigs: They
were under q month old when their
owner decided to move. He wanted
to fatten aud kill their mothers, so
offered tho lot Of forty at a bargain
price. A neghbor five miles away
bought the pigs, put them in big
box, hoisted the box on wagon and
hauled it home. There the pigs were
put in a closed pen, fed on milk aud
mush for two weeks, then allowed to
run in a small lot adjacent the pen.
Three mornings later every one was
missing. A small hole carefully rooted
under the gate was the sole explana.
ton OF their disappearance. Their
buyer searched high and low for them,
sending even to adjacent farms, bat
could not find them. That afternoon
the original owner sent word he had
found thirty.nine Of tho forty stand.
ing squealing at his gate when ne
awoke The buyer going to reclaim
the strays, found the missing fortieth
pig lying exhausted by the roadside.
still struggling TO follow the trail oi
its mates.
Upon the same middle Tennessee
plantation a four.year-o marc was
bought from an Ohio drove. This
drove had been brought down on
stock cars to the county town, seven
miles away. The mare seemed per-
fectly content in her new surround.
ings, so after q week or two she was
allowed to pasture with other stock.
For day she was happy, grazing and
froiiCking with the rest. Toward
noon Of the second day a watcher saw
her suddenly fling up her head, cock
one ear forward, one back, as though
listening intently to a far off call,
then start in a swinging gallOp for the
pasture fence, clear IL with a flying
leap, cross a field of young corn, take
the boundary fence, a much sitter one,
and 60 away due north. Nothing more
was seen or heard of her for three
months. Then by a singular chance
she wss discovered, impounded as an
estray, more than half way across the
State of Kentucky. She had swum q
considerable river to get so far, and
had been taken up, through breaking
into pasture to Craze. She was go.
ing home straight as the crow flies,
making no account whatever of the
bends aud turns in the route by which
she lad been fetched.
Among fowls, domestic turkeys are
the most persistent homers. This
same plantations mistress found that
out in a way at once odd and provok-
ing. she raised a brood of fourteen,
which turned ont to contain thirteen
gobblers. They were fine lusty bronze.
brown fellows, although this was in
the year when bronze turkeys,
called, were unknown. She g4sT-
away seven out Of the thirteen to -
many neighbors, to put at the head Of
their breeding hocks. AS a conse.
quenoe, almost every day for six weeks
she had TO go out and help to sepa
rate her own turkeys from some other
flock. Each of the gilt gobbblera
came back home, not once but many
times, with his harem at his heels.
Cats are prOverbial homers.