404 LEAVES FROM THE 



Wagers have been laid and matches have been made 

 to determine the rate of a carrier-pigeon's flight. In 

 1808 a young man in the Borough undertook that his 

 pigeons would fly thirty-five miles in one hour. Three 

 were thrown up at five o'clock in the evening beyond 

 Tunbridge Wells, and arrived at their owner's residence 

 in fifty-three minutes, thus beating time by seven 

 minutes. A gentleman had a wager on this event, and 

 he sent a pigeon by the stage coach to Bury St. Ed- 

 mund's, with a request that the bird, two days after its 

 arrival there, might be thrown up as the clock struck 

 nine in the morning. This was done ; and at half- 

 past eleven o'clock on that morning the pigeon was 

 shown at the Bull Inn, Bishopsgate, into the loft of 

 which respectable establishment it had entered, having 

 made its way to that point in London in two hours and 

 a half, and having traversed seventy-two aerial miles. 



When the trial of the annual prize for the best carrier- 

 pigeon was decided at Ghent on the 24th of June, 1833, 

 twenty-four birds which had been conveyed from that 

 town were thrown up at Rouen at fifty -five minutes 

 after nine o'clock in the morning. The distance is 150 

 miles, be the same, in lawyer's phrase, more or less, and 

 the first pigeon arrived at Ghent in an hour and a 

 half, sixteen came in within two hours and a-half, and 

 three in the course of the day. Four were lost. 



He who would train a carrier-pigeon must take a 

 young one that is fully fledged, and convey it in a basket 

 or bag, at first not more than half a mile from home, 

 and then turn it loose. After a repetition of this short 

 journey twice or thrice, the future messenger should be 

 taken to a distance of two, four, eight, ten, twelve, fif- 

 teen miles, and so on, and then turned loose, till it will 

 return from the most remote parts of the kingdom. The 

 younger the bird is, if it have strength to fly well, the 

 greater is the chance of educating it for a trusty bearer 



