THE CARRIER PIGEON. 91 



The reader has, of course, seen in the papers how beleaguered 

 Paris keeps up communication with Belgium and the provinces, by 

 means of balloons and carrier pigeons. Of balloons and ballooning 

 we have no practical experience ; of carrier pigeons we do know 

 something, the bird being as well-known to us as is a robin 

 redbreast to a gardener. We kept them for some time, but were 

 obliged to get quit of them on account of their ineradicable pro- 

 pensity to purloin our neighbours' turnip seed from the drill 

 immediately after being sown and before they got time to sprout. 

 All pigeons have this habit, but the carrier worse and more per- 

 sistently than any other. The speed and power of wing appertain- 

 ing to the carrier pigeon is extraordinary, and if not well attested 

 would be deemed incredible. We remember, for instance, that at 

 the Christmas of 1845, when a student at the University of 

 St. Andrews (best as well as oldest university in Scotland, gainsay 

 it who may !) we spent our holidays at Kirkmichael, a pleasant 

 little village in the Highlands of Perthshire. On leaving St. 

 Andrews we took with us a carrier pigeon, a magnificent bird. On 

 the 1st of January 1846, at the hour of noon precisely, we gave 

 this bird, with a bit of narrow blue ribbon tied under his wing, 

 his liberty on the bridge of Kirkmichael. When let out of his 

 basket he instantly soared up in a sort of spiral flight, ascending 

 and ascending cork-screw fashion until he seemed to the eye no 

 bigger than a wren, then straight and swift as an arrow from a bow 

 he urged his flight southwards, and became lost to view. On re- 

 turning to St. Andrews, we found that our bird had reached his 

 dovecot, eagerly watched and waited for by his owner, as the 

 College bells were chiming one o'clock on the same day, so that it 

 must have done the distance, about fifty-four miles as the crow flies, 

 in about one hour, or very nearly at the rate of a mile a minute. 

 Now, it must be remembered that this was the bird's ordinary 

 flight. He doubtless sought his distant home in what one might 



