THE SENSE OF DIRECTION.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.] SIR,--.A.8 bearing on this interesting subject, will you permit me to mention the following incidents, one of which came within my own observation, and the other two as narrated to me by a friend in Victoria, in whose strict veracity I have the most perfect reliance? In passing through Bombay early in 1850 I bought a fine black Kutch pony and marched with him to Katuptee, in Central India, 50 miles. The evening after arrival I dined with the cavalry regiment, at the far end of the cantonment, over three miles distant from the house I had secured ; but on leaving the mess-house, the ape having run off at once in advance, I found myself plunged in worse than Egyptian darkness without the smallest con- ception of the road home or any trace of surrounding objects. The pony, nevertheless, took me along the whole distance, in at the gate of my compound, and up to the house door, although he had never been east of Bombay, much less acquainted with the cantonment of Kamptee.
My Victorian friend was at the time of the incident I am about to mention—some thirty years ago—engaged in breeding horses. It appears that on one occasion while driving a mob of horses down to Melbourne for sale he lost his way in the bush, and wandering on through most of the day vainly endeavouring to find his camp, had very nearly arrived at the despairing conviction that he was hopelessly lost, as not infrequently happens in Australia. Feeling the horse he was riding rather boring on the bit to one side, it suddenly occurred to him that the animal had the sense of direction, and trusting entirely to this, he threw the reins on his neck. The horse, turning right round, got soon into a lobbing canter, and brought my friend direct to his camp, situated, as he judged, some seven miles away. On many subsequent occasions my friend found this horse's sense of direction quite unerring. His experience, however, of tho majority of horses which passed through his hands was that they either possessed the sense in very low degree or not at all.
But what appears to me a still more remarkable instance of the sense in question was narrated by the same friend as con- nected with a horse he at one time possessed, which, reared by himself, showed such cleverness in undoing bolts and fastenings of all kinds that nothing short of a lock and
key availed to keep him either in or out of his stable. On selling this animal to a planter, who was then travelling right up to the North of Australia, over a thousand miles distant, he warned him that unless well secured en route the horse would almost certainly get back to his old stable. In a month or thereabouts this actually occurred. The animal was one morning found in his stall little better than skin and bone, having, as my friend calculated by the dates given him, travelled right across a great part of the continent to his old home at the rate of over a hundred miles a day ! On two subsequent occasions this horse got away from purchasers who, notwithstanding the information my friend gave of his past history, desired to possess him, and returned from great distances to his old home, where he remained for the rest of his days, too clever to be parted with !—I am, Sir, &c..
EQUUS.
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