Homewards
Instances abound of the homing instinct of various animals, of dogs, cats and even horses. As a boy I rode a pony that would always take me straight home if the hunt left me stranded in an unknown spot. As for dogs, a dozen examples of their skill in orientation recur. This week a neighbour has been astonished at a like sense in a ram. It was bought by a farmer and seemed content enough in its new quarters, but presently escaped and made its way without apparent difficulty back to its old home some four or five miles away. Such a sense is, however, not .uncommon in sheep. On the fells in the North-West the flocks of Herdwicks nurse such an affection for their own fells, beyond which they do not habitually stray, that the custom has become general of selling the sheep—at a fixed rate—with any farm that is sold. Besides this, many individual instances are quoted of a single sheep that has been sold returning at the first opportunity to its old haunts. This directional gift—as in migratory birds—is certainly not dependent on the recollection of any landmark. Whence is it derived ? Some native tribes, as in Australia, seem to have a share in the instinct.
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