With the exception of the anthropoid apes all mammals possess the homing sense in a higher or lower degree; this is true also of birds. Experiments with the nesting robin show conclusively that this bird can find its way back to its nest when carried fifty miles from its home and then set free among wholly unknown surroundings. The well-known exploits of the carrier-pigeon are so familiar that they scarcely need comment. On May 3, 1898, two carrier-pigeons, en route for Louisville, rested for a time at Owensboro, Kentucky; these birds had been set free at New Orleans, Louisiana. The duck and the goose sometimes have this sense very highly developed. I once knew a goose to travel back home after having been carried in a covered basket for the distance of eighteen miles. A drake and duck have been known to return to their home after being carried a distance of nine miles by railway. Instances of home-returning by dogs, cats, horses, etc., are of such common occurrence that I hardly need call attention to them; the following instance is so unique, however, that I will present it:-- In the fall of 1861, a gentleman of Vincennes, Indiana, visited his father at Lebanon, Kentucky; when this gentleman started to return home, his father gave him a yoke of young steers, which he drove, _via_ Louisville, Kentucky, to Vincennes. Shortly after his arrival at this last-mentioned town, the steers made their escape, swam the river at Owensboro, Kentucky, 160 miles below Louisville, Kentucky, and, in a week or so, were found one morning at the gate of their old home at Lebanon. Directed by their homing sense alone, these animals had made a journey of several hundred miles over a route they had never seen! Fishermen are aware that certain fish choose localities for lurking-places, which they will share with no other fish. The black bass, and brook trout, and sturgeon, and goggle-eye are familiar examples of fish which have this habit. On one occasion, I performed the following experiment: I took a black bass from its home near a sunken stump, and, after passing a short piece of thread through the web of its tail and knotting it, replaced it in the river, two miles below its lurking-place. The next day I saw it in its old home, clearly recognizable by the bit of thread which waved to and fro in the clear water as the fish gently moved its tail! In an examination of phenomena such as have been discussed in this chapter, ay, throughout this book, we must lay aside the dogmatic assertions of our superstitious ancestors, who, to paraphrase Roscoe, "when awed by superstition, and subdued by hereditary prejudices, could not only assent to the most incredible proposition, but could act in consequence of these convictions, with as much energy and perseverance as if they were the clearest deductions of reason, or the most evident dictates of truth."[107] [107] Roscoe, _Life of Leo X._, p. 3.