Lookers-on generally misjudge, though they claim to see most of the game.
The next morning, by strange coincidence, a letter was delivered at the mill, destined to alter Murphy’s future altogether.
IV
Daniel was one of those dogs that die famous, though belonging to a small circle; not famous in the sense in which the dogs of history are so, but because he possessed individuality and stamped himself upon the memories of all who ever met him. And these last were not few, for Dan had travelled widely and had gathered multitudes of friends. Then, again, he possessed those two almost indispensable adjuncts of popularity—delightful manners and a beautiful face. It was his invariable custom to get up when any one came into a room; and when he advanced to meet them, it might certainly have been said that, in his case, the tail literally wagged the dog, for his hind-quarters were moved from the middle of his back and went in rhythm with the tail. His looks were perfect. Being by Pagan I., he possessed not only eyes set in black and a coal-black snout, but also that further characteristic of dogs of his date, the blackest of black ears—a feature now entirely lost in the case of Irish terriers, and never, it is said, to be regained.
Apart from a liberal education and the miscellaneous knowledge he had picked up for himself, to say nothing of a wonderful series of clever tricks, the instinct known as the sense of direction was in his case developed to an altogether abnormal extent. Definite traces of this were noticeable when he was still a puppy; but it was at all times impossible for him to lose his way. As he grew older, this instinct became so marked, that it set others wondering whether or not there existed among dogs a sixth, and perhaps a seventh, sense, lying far beyond the grasp of human, limited intelligence.
Dogs, as we all know, are not the only animals, that possess this mysterious instinct. They share it with many other classes, such as those of the feline tribe, and also with the birds and a number of insects. In fact, all animals appear to possess it in varying degree; they are all more or less able to find their way home. Yet, study it how we may, we are at fault when we try to account for it. In many cases, the homing instinct is apparently governed by sight; but many scientific observers entertain the idea that the sense of smell, in the majority of instances, will be found to lie at the root of the matter. Possibly they are right.
When, however, we are brought face to face with an exceptional exhibition of the sense, we have to confess that we are left unconvinced by any of the theories that have at present been advanced. It is no unusual thing for a dog to find its way home along a road it had not previously travelled, going with the wind, and in the dark. One case is known to the writer where a dog found the ship it had come out in in a foreign port to which it had been taken, and made a voyage by sea, as well as a considerable journey by land on its return to this country, in order to reach its home. A cat also, within the writer’s knowledge, found its way back to its home, though it had been brought some distance in a sack lying at the bottom of a farmer’s gig, and though the return journey entailed traversing the streets of a busy town. Any one may test a bee’s powers in the same way, by affixing to it a small particle of cotton-wool. When liberated, it will take a perfectly straight or bee line to its hive, though this lie at a considerable distance. It is unnecessary to refer to the achievements of carrier-pigeons, when set free after a long journey and the lapse of many hours, or to the way in which rooks, especially, as well as starlings, will find their way to their usual roosting-places across wide valleys shrouded in dense November fogs.
Nor must we succumb here to the temptations offered by the very mention of migrants, though we may well ask, what is the power that enables a swallow to leave the banks of the Upper Nile and arrive at the nest it left the year before, beneath the eaves of a cottage standing on the banks of the Upper Thames? Or what directs the turtle-dove, year by year, from the oleander-grown banks of the streams of Morocco to the more grateful shade of our English woodlands? Yet marked birds have proved the truth of these and still more wonderful achievements.