Perception and Instinct in the Lower Animals

Abstract

I HAVE waited some time in the expectation that some of your readers would have asked Mr. Wallace a very obvious question with regard to the incident he adduces of a dog finding his master five months after having been lost, and in a house which the latter “had not contemplated going to or even seen before the loss of the dog.” (NATURE, vol. viii. p. 66.) In seeking to account for this thoroughly authentic and highly remarkable case, Mr. Wallace observes: “Could it have obtained information from other dogs . . . .? Could the odour of persons and furniture linger two months in the streets? These are almost the only conceivable sources of information; for the roost thorough-going advocates for a “sense of direction” will hardly maintain that it could enable a dog to go straight to his master, wherever he might happen to be. Now, there is yet a third supposition open to us, and it is one which, in the absence of information, is certainly the most probable. Can Mr. Wallace's friend remember whether he had been walking in the vicinity of his new house during the day upon which the dog returned? i.e. can he be sore the dog did not trace his footstops? That keen-scented terrier is able to distinguish to follow his master's track in a public thorough fare, however densely it may be crowded, I know from the success of searching experiments.