VISION. 13 



recognise some indications of the earth below, when 

 it begins to wheel round in a descending spiral, 

 increasing in diameter for the evident purpose of 

 surveying its locality and discovering some object 

 previously known by which to direct its flight. 



The rapidity with which the carrier pigeon per- 

 forms long journeys may perhaps be adduced as an 

 objection to this explanation. M. Antoine, for example, 

 tells us that a gentleman of Cologne, having business 

 to transact at Paris, laid a wager of fifty Napoleons 

 (<s40) that he would let his friends know of his 

 arrival within three hours, and as the distance is a 

 hundred leagues the bet was eagerly taken. He 

 accordingly took with him two carrier pigeons which 

 had young at the time, and on arriving at Paris 

 at ten o'clock in the morning, he tied a letter to 

 each of his pigeons, and despatched them at eleven 

 precisely. One of them arrived at Cologne at five 

 minutes past one o'clock, and the other nine minutes 

 later*, and consequently they had performed nearly 

 a hundred and fifty miles an hour, reckoning their 

 flight to have been in a direct line. But their rapidity 

 was probably much greater if they took a circular 

 flight, as we have concluded from the observation of 

 facts. Audubon proves that the American passenger 

 pigeon (Columba migratoria) can fly at least a mile 

 in a minute fj and this is a heavier bird than the 

 carrier pigeon. The flight of the carrier pigeon 

 however is, if we may trust to the facts recorded, very 

 various. Lithgow, the traveller, tells us that one of 

 them will carry a letter from Babylon to Aleppo 

 (which is thirty days' journey) in forty- eight hours. 

 In order to measure the speed of the bird, a gentleman 

 some years ago sent one from London by the coach 

 to a friend at Bury St. Edmunds, and along with it a 



* Antoine, Animaux Celebres, ii. 121. 

 f Ornith. Biogr. p. 320. 



