PIGEONS 



295 



the explanation of a learned French naturaHst, 

 given in the following paragraph : 



"The pigeon sees amazingly far. Circling 

 round his dovecote to a great and still greater 

 height, he obtains an ever-increasing view of 

 his surroundings and of the horizon. It is true 

 that this view becomes less distinct in the 



German Pigeons 



upper strata of the air, but it also becomes far 

 wider. When, therefore, he is let loose at a 

 distance from his home he rises in circles to a 

 great height, trying to perceive some portion 

 of the familiar view he has seen about his 

 home, which then enables him to choose the 

 direction for his flight. There are, of course, 

 certain limits and certain obstacles, and the 

 pigeon which can discover his route at a 

 distance of, say, a hundred miles or more is a 

 past master in his profession." He must have 

 made many journeys before he attained such 

 proficiency, a fact that should be taken account 

 of in judging of the theory above given. 



A good messenger pigeon, to whatever breed 

 he may belong, should have a solid breast, long 

 wings, strong pinions, a slender tail of good 

 length, and be courageous but not wild. Natur- 

 ally pigeons with large, keen eyes and no defect 

 or anomaly in their legs and feet should be 

 chosen. 



VII. Pigeon Post. Tr.mmnt. for it 



From the days when the champions of the 

 Greek games made known to distant friends 

 by means of pigeons that they were victors 



down to the present day when Russian eyes 

 have been fixed in anguish on Port Arthur, 

 hoping for news by pigeon post, these birds 

 have been in many ways the bearers of good 

 and evil tidings in times both of peace and 

 war. A caliph of Bagdad established the first 

 regularpigeon servicein the twelfth century, and 

 it is said that the Rothschilds have made enor- 

 mous gains, thanks to their organized pigeon 

 express. The press has been, and still is, often 

 served by these messenger birds. The Gu- 

 zctte dc Cologne especially makes frequent use 

 of them. To-day, however, the pigeon is not 

 so rapid as the telegraph and the telephone, 

 and so long as the wire has not attained its 

 perfection point, the pigeon may still keep up 

 in times of war an otherwise hopeless commu- 

 nication between two localities. It is well known 

 that this was done on a vast scale during the 

 siege of Paris in 1870, when use was made of 

 microscopic photography to send by one bird 

 fifty thousand copies of news in miniature. 



At the present time much use is still made 

 of a maritime pigeon-post system, by which 

 messages are sent, without signals, to specified 

 distances from the coast. A military pigeon 



The Enolish Falconet Pioeon 



post is established in several countries, chief 

 among them Germany. At Cologne there is 

 a large station with five or six hundred pigeons, 

 which is in direct communication with Berlin 

 and various fortified places. It is calculated 

 that one hundred miles is the normal maxi- 

 mum which a bird can fly and perform its mis- 

 sions well. A special detachment of cavalry 

 is charged with the care of these pigeons. 



