1 86 THE BOOK OF MIGRATORY BIRDS 



London at 7 a.m., and at noon the first bird reached its 

 destination, having accomplished the distance of 210 

 miles in (allowing for difference of time) about four and 

 three-quarter hours, or at the rate of something like 45 

 miles per hour the speed of a railway train. A few 

 years later fifty-six pigeons were brought over from 

 Holland, and having been set free in London at 4.30 

 a.m., the swiftest bird traversed the distance of 300 miles 

 at the rate of 50 miles per hour, the slowest doing it in 

 37^ miles in the hour, on an average. But a much quicker 

 flight than these is on record; for we find it chronicled 

 that in 1842 a pigeon flew from Ballinasloe in Ireland to 

 Castle Bernard, a distance of twenty-three Irish miles, in 

 eleven minutes, which gives the almost incredible velocity 

 of 160 English miles per hour, a speed nearly equal to 

 that of the common swift, which is, without doubt, the 

 fleetest of all birds. As a bearer of military despatches, 

 the pigeon has long since given way to the mounted 

 messenger, the railway, the telegraph, and the heliograph, 

 and other methods of signalling, though up to within 

 comparatively recent times it continued to be employed as 

 a conveyer of general intelligence. 



As already stated, pigeons have long since ceased to be 

 employed as carriers of military intelligence, but within 

 the past decade or so the war authorities of the chie'f 

 European nations have given much consideration as to 

 the advisableness of again utilising them for this purpose, 

 as the fact that it was only by means of these birds that 

 Paris received news from the outside world during the 

 many weeks of the siege of 1870-71, set at rest all doubts 

 as to the possibility of usefully employing these Swift 

 aerial messengers under certain conditions. 



In our own country, the exigencies of climate mist, 

 fog, sea fret, &c., render the employment of the bird as a 

 national resource out of the question. The country doctor 

 and postmaster, in many different parts of these islands, 

 however, find the "carrier" of great value. 



