THE INSTINCT OF LOCALITY IN ANIMALS.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—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 bad known his master's destination, and been able to inquire the way overland to A.rbroath. 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 P Carrier-pigeons are taught " homing " by taking them gradually longer fliglits 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 atation 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 r ity 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 intelli- gence; they possess in common with us what is not intelli- gence, but instinct.—I am, Sir, &c., A. J. MACKINTOSH.
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