Perception and Instinct in the Lower Animals

Abstract

THE suggestion made by me in your issue of February 20, that animals which had been deprived of the use of their eyes during a journey might retrace their way by means of smell, had the effect of letting loose a flood of illustration, fact, and argument bearing more or less directly on the question; and as the stream now seems to have run nearly dry, I ask permission briefly to review the evidence adduced, so far as it affects the particular issue I brought forward. Several of the writers argue as if I had maintained that in all cases dogs, &c., find their way, wholly or mainly, by smell; whereas I strictly limited it to the case in which their other senses could not be used. The cases of this kind adduced by your correspondents are but few. The first, and perhaps the most curious, is that of Mr. Darwin's horse; but, unfortunately, the whole of the facts are not known, As Mr. Darwin himself pointed out, the horse may have lived in the Isle of Wight, and been accustomed to go home along that very road. I would suggest also that the country might resemble some tract in the neighbourhood of his own home; or that the horse, having been brought from home by a route and to a distance of which it had no means of judging, thought its master was riding home on the occasion in question, and therefore objected to turning back. Anyhow, the case is too imperfect to be of much value as evidence in so difficult a matter. “J. T.” (March 25) quotes the case of the hound sent “from Newbridge, county Dublin, to Moynalty, county Meath,” thence long afterwards to Dublin, where it broke loose, and the same morning made its way back to its old kennel at Newbridge. I can find no “Newbridge, county Dublin,” although there is a Newbridge, county Kildare, which is 26 miles from Dublin, on a pretty direct high road. That the dog never attempted to return during its “long stay” at Moynalty seems to show that some special facilities existed for the return from Newbridge. What they may have been we cannot guess at in the total absence of information as to the antecedents of the dog, the route by which he returned, and the manner in which he conducted himself on first escaping in Dublin.