106 THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS 
that there was a tail-wind to help the birds. With 
regard to the 80-mile gece, the only meteorological 
note is ‘‘ weather hazy.” In the Working Homer, 
a high authority lays it down that a tail-wind is not 
absolutely essential to good “ times”; what is all- 
essential is anticyclonic weather. A cyclone is 
disastrous to them. In a light breeze during an 
anticyclone it is recorded in this treatise that a 
Homing Pigeon flew from Banff to North Hants at 
the rate of 1,900 yards per minute, or 62 miles an 
hour, an astonishing pace. The author tells of a 
celebrated bird ‘‘ Vonolel,’? which in two races 
maintained a velocity of over a mile a minute. 
Unfortunately he gives no record of the weather. 
In France the experiment has been made of 
employing Swallows in place of Homing Pigeons. 
The idea is a very ancient one, for Pliny tells us that 
a certain Roman knight, who wished to let his friends 
at Volaterrae (in Tuscany) know who had won the 
chariot races, used to take with him to Rome—a 
distance of 130 miles—some Swallows, which he let 
loose after dyeing them the colour of the winner. 
Of the experiments in France I have not been able 
to obtain any accounts at first hand. One flight is 
reported to have been a very grand one, far sur- 
passing anything credited to a Homing Pigeon. A 
Swallow was taken from Roubaix to Paris, a distance 
of 258 kilometres, or 160 English miles, and in 90 
minutes from the time of its liberation at Paris it 
was back again. It had kept up a pace of 106 miles 
per hour!* This may seem incredible, but the 
* See an article quoted from the Globe in the Zoologist for 1887, 
p. 397. In the Homing News for Sept. 13, 1889, is an account 
apparently of the same flight, the distance being given as 250 
kilometres. 
