The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-05-02
A HOMlNG INSTINCT.
IT DEVELOPS IN YOUNG ANI-
 MAILS ALMOST AT BIRTH.

The Wonderful Ability Displayed by Various Species in Finding Their
 Way uomc-A Tale of Little Pigs and the Story of Mare.
 The homing instinct developes 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 the herd or mack. Even after centuries of do- mestication it is still acute.
 Witness this tale of little pigs: They were under a month old when their owner decided to move. He wanted to fatten and kill their mother, so offered the lot of forty at bargain price, A neighbor five miles away bought the pigs, put them in box, hoisted the box on a wagon and hauled it nome. The pigs were put in a close pen, fed on milk and mush for two weeks. then allowed to Tun in a small lot adjacent to the pen. Three mornings later every one was missing. A small hole care fully rooted under the gate was the sole explanation of their disappearance, Their buyer searched high and low for them, sending even to adjacent farms, but could not find them.
 That afternoon the original owner sent word he found thirty-nine of the forty standing sauealing at his gate when he awoke. The buyers going to reclaim the stravs found the missing fortieth pig lying exhausted by the roadside, but still struggling to follow the trail of it's mates.
 Upon the same middle Tennessee plantation a four-year-old made was bought from an Ohio drove. The drove had been brought down on stock cars to the country town, seven miles away. The mare seemed perfectly contented in her new surroundings. so after a week or two she was allowed to pasture with other stock For a day she was happy, grazing and frolicking with the rest. Toward noon e 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 it with one flying leap, cross a field of young corn, take the boundary fence, much stiffer one, and go away due north.
 Nothing more was seen or heard of her for thrae months Then by sim gular chance she was discovered, inn pounded as an estray. more than half way across the state of Kentucky. She mad swum 9. considerable river to get so far and had been taken up through breaking into a. pasture graze. She was going home straight as the crow flies, making no account whatever Of the bends and turns in the route by which she had been fetched.
 Among fowls. domestic turkeys are the most persistent homers. This same plantations S mistress found that out ill .a way at once odd and provoking. She raised a brood of fourteen, which turn ed out to contain thirteen gobblers. They were fine, lusty, bronze brown fel- lows although this was in the year when bronze turkeys, so called, were unknown. She gave away seven out of the thirteen to as many neighhors to nut at the head of their breeding f1ocks. As a consequence almost every day for six weeks she had to go out and help to separate her own turkeys from some
  came back home, not once, but many times, with his harem at his heels.
 Cats are proyerbial homers Southern negroes have many entertaining super stitions connected with their transfer In moving they say it is the worst luck in the world to take along the cat. 1t is also very bad luck to give away cat unless it's feet are greased and allowed to make marks on the threshold it goes over. They say, further, the homing propensity can be destroyd by putting buttrr On pussy's feet before they touch anything in her new home.
 Black walnuts which it is nearly as bad luck to move as cat, may be made to serve as ill luck antidotes by crack ing them carefully and either tying a necklace of shells on the cat or putting them upon her feet for boots It is lucky to have the gift of a cat and luck fer still to have one come to you of it's own motion. A gift cat ought to be taken home in bag securely tied so none of the luck will escape.
 Notwithstanding this was done in the case of a tortoise shell tabby, she came home over 8 distance of fifteen miles. She took all summer to do it in. The road home led through pleasant woods and was never very far from a clear creek. At various times between June when she vanished from her Eew home and November, when she reappeared at her old one, tabby was seen scurrying through the woods with a bird in her mouth or summing herself luxuriously high in some safe tree crotch. The first .1.L d. jar door moving and looking up at her old master as if she had never left it, Chicago Inter-Ocean.