92 NETHER LOCHABER. 



call a brisk and business-like manner, nor swerved, we may be sure, 

 an inch from, his course, nor loitered by the way. He was going 

 well very well, if you like throughout, but not going his best. 

 The probability is that under extraordinary pressure, with a falcon 

 in chase, for instance, the same bird could and would have gone 

 twice as fast, or at a rate of something more than a hundred miles 

 an hour. If the reader likes to experiment in this direction, he can 

 easily try it with the common domestic pigeon, as we have done 

 more than once. Years ago we recollect a brother of ours taking, 

 at our suggestion, a common black and white pigeon from the dove- 

 cot here to Oban, where, at a preconcerted hour on a day agreed 

 upon, he set it at liberty. The bird took nearly two hours to do 

 the distance, some twenty-three or twenty-four miles as the crow 

 flies ; but it probably lingered some time by the way to feed, as, 

 instead of being well fed, which should always be strictly attended 

 to, it received no food at all on the morning of its liberation at Oban. 

 The house-pigeon, however, is useless except for comparatively short 

 distances, and even then is never to be much depended upon. His 

 extreme domesticity predisposes him to pay a visit to every dovecot 

 011 the route, and to fraternise with every flock of brother pigeons 

 he may happen to fall in with. His peculiar mode of flight, besides, 

 and his extreme timidity, mark him out as an easy and desirable 

 prey for any keen-eyed hawk or falcon that may be at the moment 

 impransus, as Johnson in his early days once signed a note in 

 London dinnerless. The common pigeon, too, wings his flight at 

 a comparatively low altitude, and becomes an easy shot to any one 

 with a gun ready to hand when it passes by. Not so the true 

 carrier pigeon, which flies at a great height, far out of range of 

 needle-gun or artillery out of range of human sight, in fact ; so 

 that it is never in danger of being brought to grief, as was poor 

 Gambetta in his balloon when passing above the Prussian lines the 

 other day. The velocity with which some birds fly is almost in- 



