Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 November 1893 — Duck’s Sense of Direction. [ARTICLE]

Duck’s Sense of Direction.

James Payne, in the Illustrated T.ondon News: The duck has been supposed to be the dullest of all birds, so much so as to reply in tho affirmative to the invitation: “Dilly, dilly, come and be killed.” A correspondent in New Zealand supplies mo, however, with an anecdote to tho contrary: "I live on tho Bhore of the narbor, and I have a friend who dwells on tho opposite shore eleven miles from me in a straight lino. Ho lives up a narrow creek, and in coming to my place ho has to pass a number of other oreoks on either side, thon several islands and finally to cross a stretch of open water about four miles across, where a swift tide runs and whore tljoro is often a heavy soa. A few weeks ago this friend curne to seo me. and brought with him as a present a common drake which had been bred on his place and had never been a hundred yards from the house. It came over in tho bottom of the boat, whero it could seo nothing but the sky, with its legs tied. When he gave it'to me I turned it adrift with my own ducks and thought no more about it, and, in fact, I never saw it again. When 1 saw my friend, however, some time after, ho told me that on tho morning after his visit to mo ho was awakened by a great commotion and quacking in his duck-yard, and on going out to seo what was tho matter he saw tho drako which ho had brought over to mo waddling up to tho inclosuro in rather u travel-worn condition, while his brethren wore welcoming him as one restorod to them from tho dead.” Considering what this drake accomplished, my correspondent justly considers his achievement ontitlod to bo coupled with that of tho bthor circumnavigator, his namesake.