The faculties of birds / [Anon].

  • James Rennie
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The faculties of birds / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    although carried far, being never willing to forsake the house for the love of any man, and most contrary to the nature of a dog, who will travel abroad with his master; but although their masters forsake their houses, yet will not these beasts (cats) bear them company, and being carried forth in close baskets or sacks they will return again*.” We have thus known a cat travel from London to Chatham in Kent, a distance of thirty miles t; and most persons can relate similar incidents. Gesner, however, is not correct in confining this propensity to the cat, for dogs frequently do the same. D’Obsonville, in his curious work, mentions a remark¬ able instance in a mastiff. This dog, which he had brought up in India from two months old, accompanied him and a friend from Pondicherry to Benglour, a distance of more than three hundred leagues. “ Our journey,” he goes on to say, “ occupied nearly three weeks ; and we had to traverse numerous plains and mountains, and to ford rivers and go along several by-paths. The animal, which had certainly never been in that country before, lost us at Benglour, and imme diately returned to Pondicherry. He went directly to the house of M. Beylier, then commandant of artillery, my friend, and with whom I had generally lived. Now the difficulty is not so much to know how the dog subsisted on the road (for he was very strong and able to procure himself food), but how he could so well have found his way after an interval of more than a monthf.’’ A still more extraordinary instance of returning is recorded on the authority of Lieutenant Alderson of the Royal Engineers, who was personally acquainted with the facts. In March, 1816, an ass, the property of Captain Dundas, R.N., then at Malta, was shipped * History of four-footed Beasts, by Topsel, p. 82. t J. R. I D’Obsonville’s Phil. Essays, Lond. 1784.
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