154 PIGEON FLYING. 



Whatever benefit or utility may have been de- 

 rived, in ancient days, from these winged messen- 

 gers, it is probable the moderns reap no other 

 benefit from them than that of amusement and the 

 gratification of curiosity, by flying them for prizes 

 and betting. Scarcely, however, is there a great 

 race or great fistic contest at distance from the me- 

 tropolis, but a profitable use is said to be made by 

 pigeon flyers, in sending instant intelligence of the 

 result to their confederates in town. But after all, 

 this appears, with perhaps a few exceptions, to have 

 been from the beginning a regularly repeated hoax ; 

 and such is the opinion of a late writer in the Sport- 

 ing Magazine. The practice, nevertheless, of flying 

 pigeons between this country and the continent, has 

 revived within the three or four last years, and has 

 been frequently repeated. It is pretended, that 

 speedy intelligence is thus kept up between London 

 and Rotterdam, on the course of exchanges. 



In 1825, the Society of Amateurs at Antwerp 

 sent ninety carriers to Paris, to fly for a prize. 

 They were started from the French capital at seven 

 in the morning, and by noon of the same day, thir- 

 teen of them had reached home. The first arrived 

 at half-past eleven o'clock. One of the Flemish 

 breed, turned off after the fight for the champion- 

 ship, at Warwick, by Harry England, of the Green 

 Man Inn, Kent Road, performed the ninety two 

 miles in three hours and thirty minutes. Mr. At- 

 wood made a bet of one hundred sovereigns, that 

 he would fly six pigeons from the high ground near 

 Crostwick, in Norfolk, one hundred and fourteen 



