BIRD PROBLEMS 215 



purple martin. The speed of flight in the former is 

 approximately known, and it is able to cover 

 sixteen hundred miles in twenty-four hours. This, 

 however, is marvellous, when it is seen that flying 

 at the rate of nearly seventy miles an hour it takes 

 the bird two days and nights to cross. What must 

 be the nature of the mechanism that can stand such 

 a strain as this? In the Anglo-Belgian pigeon 

 races some of the birds attain to nearly a mile a 

 minute, and this when the race is for five hundred 

 miles.* The English, French and Germans all 

 rear pigeons in their fortresses; and the birds are 

 also utilised by the Trinity House in conveying 

 messages from the light-ships. They are also used 

 on the Indian stations. Two facts taken in con- 

 junction are significant. The Germans are training 

 pigeons to carry messages ; the Russians are training 

 falcons to catch pigeons. 



The noblest of the birds of prey, the peregrine, 

 has been seen flying over mid- Atlantic ; and I have 

 known a bird of this species, when in perfect training, 



* A pigeon-fancier of Hamme, in Westphalia, made a wager that a 

 dozen bees liberated three miles from their hive would reach it in better 

 time than a dozen pigeons would reach their cote from the same distance. 

 The competitors were given wing at Rhynhern, a village nearly a league 

 from Hamme, and the first bee finished a quarter of a minute in advance 

 of the first pigeon ; three other bees reached the goal before the second 

 pigeon ; the main body of both detachments finishing almost simultane- 

 ously an instant or two later. The bees, too, may be said to have been 

 handicapped in the race, having been rolled in flour before starting for 

 purposes of identification. 



