A cat carried a hundred miles in a basket, a dog taken, perhaps, five hundred miles by rail, in a few days may have found their way back to the starting-point. So we have often been told, and, no doubt, the thing has happened. We have been astonished at the wonderful intelligence displayed. Magic, I should call it. Last week I heard of a captain who sailed from Aberdeen to Arbroath. He left behind him a dog which, according to the story, had never been in Arbroath, but when he arrived there the dog was waiting on the quay. I was expected to believe that the dog had known his master's destination, and been able to inquire the way overland to Arbroath. Truly marvellous! But, really, it is time to inquire more carefully as to what these stories do mean; we must cease to ascribe our intelligence to animals, and learn that it is we that often possess their instinct. A cat on a farm will wander many miles in search of prey, and will therefore be well acquainted with the country for many miles round. It is taken fifty miles away. Again it wanders, and comes across a bit of country it knew before. What more natural than that it should go to its old home? Carrier-pigeons are taught "homing" by taking them gradually longer flights from home, so that they may learn the look of the country. We cannot always discover that a dog actually was acquainted with the route by which it wanders home; but it is quite absurd to imagine, as most people at once do, that it was a perfect stranger to the lay of the land. To find our way a second time over ground we have once trod is scarcely intelligence; we can only call it instinct, though the word does not in the least explain the process. Two years ago I first visited Douglas, in the Isle of Man. I reached the station at 11 p.m.; I was guided to a house a mile through the town. I scarcely paid any attention to the route, yet next morning I found my way by the same route to the station, walking with my head bent, deeply thinking all the time about other things than the way. I have the instinct of locality. Most people going into a dark room that they know are by muscular sense guided exactly to the very spot they wish; so people who have the instinct of locality may wander over a moor exactly to the place they wish to reach without thinking of where they go. There may be no mental exercise connected with this. I have known a lady of great intelligence who would lose her way within half-a-mile of the house she had lived in forty years. This feeling about place belongs to that part of us that we have in common with the lower creatures. We need not postulate that the animals ever show signs of possessing our intelligence; they possess, in common with us, what is not intelligence, but instinct.
A. J. Mackintosh.
[Sept. 24, 1892.]
Will you allow me to record in the Spectator "another dog story"? It is one that testifies, for the thousandth time, to canine sagacity, and, as we are still in the silly season, which has this year in particular been so very prolific in human follies, it may be of special interest to learn some clever doings on the part of beasts. Quite recently a Westphalian squire travelled by rail from Lüxen to Wesel, on the Rhine, for the purpose of enjoying some hunting, and took with him his favourite hound. The hunting party was to have started on a Sunday morning at nine o'clock, but, to the squire's great disappointment, his sporting dog could nowhere be discovered. Disconsolate, he arrived on the following Monday afternoon at his house, and, to his great delight, he was greeted there with exuberant joy by his dog. The latter, who had never made the journey from Lüxen to Wesel, had simply run home, thus clearing a distance of eighty English miles through an unknown country. Why the sporting dog should have declined to join the hunt is, perhaps, a greater mystery than the fact of his returning home without any other guidance than his sagacious instinct. Possibly he was a Sabbatarian, and objected to imitate his master's wicked example. So, Sunday papers, please copy!
Ein Thierfreund.
[Sept. 8, 1894.]
May I be allowed to offer to your readers yet another instance of the faithfulness and sagacity of our friend the dog? The anecdote comes from a distinguished naval officer, and is best given in his own words: "This is what happened to a spaniel of mine. It was given to our children as a puppy about three or four months old, and we have had it about five or six months, making it about ten months old. It was born about three miles from here, at Hertford, and has never been anywhere but from one home to the other. When the time came for breaking him in for shooting purposes, I sent him to a keeper at Leighton-Buzzard, and, to insure a safe arrival, sent the dog with my man-servant to the train here, and thence to King's Cross. He walked with the dog to Euston Station, turned him over to the guard of the 12.15 train and the animal duly arrived at Leighton-Buzzard at 1.30, and was there met by the keeper and taken to his home about three miles off. That was on the Friday. On the following Tuesday, the dog having been with him three full days, he took him out in the morning with his gun, and at eight o'clock on Wednesday morning (that being the following day) the dog appeared here, rather dirty, and looking as if he had travelled some distance, which he undoubtedly had. There is no doubt that this puppy of ten months old was sent away, certainly forty or fifty miles as the crow flies, and that he returned here in a day. How he did it no one can say, but it is nevertheless a fact. It would be interesting to know his route and to trace his adventures." This anecdote is the more remarkable in consequence of the extreme youth of the dog, and particularly as he belongs to a breed of sporting dogs which are not generally considered to rank among the most intelligent of the species.
F. H. Suckling.
[Sept. 15, 1894.]