RAPIDITY OF FLIGHT. ?9 



supposing he lost not a moment, and proceeded in a 

 straight line; but as they usually wheel about in the 

 air for some time before they start off, and then probably 

 deviate more or less from the direct course, this first 

 bird must have flown, most likely, at a much quicker 

 rate ; of which we have an instance which occurred at the 

 fair of Ballinasloe in Ireland, in 1842, where a bird of this 

 species belonging to Thomas Bernard, Esq., was let go in 

 the town at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, with a note 

 appended to it, directing dinner to be ready at his re- 

 sidence at Castle Bernard at a given time, as he pur- 

 posed being home that day, which message reached the 

 appointed destination in eleven minutes, having travelled 

 23 miles Irish in that wonderfully short space of time, or 

 in other words, at the rate of 125 \ miles an hour. These 

 pigeons, of which Mr. Bernard had a large flock, were so 

 domesticated, that he could handle them as he pleased, 

 and so very tractable were they, that whenever he called, 

 they attend promptly. 



A curious way of guessing at the speed of a Pigeon's 

 flight has been noticed in America. Birds have been 

 shot, which, on opening them, were found to have fed 

 on coffee-berries, so fresh, that they could not have been 

 in the stomach above four or five hours; but, as the 

 nearest part of the country known to produce coffee was 

 some hundreds of miles distant, it was calculated that 

 they must have flown at the rate of sixty or seventy miles 

 per hour. 



But besides this great speed, many, even of those 

 apparently least calculated for continued flight, can 

 remain on the wing for a much longer time than we are 

 apt to imagine, from seeing them slowly and heavily 

 waddling, as in the case of farm-yard Ducks and Geese, 

 or of a Sparrow, hopping leisurely from bough to bough, 

 or flitting from thence to the house-top. Thus the tame 

 domestic Geese, belonging to several Cossack villages, 

 near the river Don, in Russia, leave their homes in March 

 or April, as soon as the ice breaks up, and take flight in 



