14 FACULTIES OF BIRDS. 



note desiring that the pigeon two days after its arrival 

 there might be thrown up precisely when the town- 

 clock struck nine in the morning-. This was accord- 

 ingly done, and the pigeon arrived in London, and 

 flew into the Bull Inn, Bishopsgate-street, at half-past 

 eleven, having flown seventy-two miles in two hours 

 and a half*, not half the speed, it may be remarked, 

 of the Cologne pigeons above recorded. 



The observations of Audubon on the passenger 

 pigeon tend to confirm the view which we have taken. 

 " Their great power of flight," he says, " enables 

 them to survey and pass over an astonishing extent 

 of country in a very short time. This is proved by 

 facts well known in America. Thus, pigeons have 

 been killed, in the neighbourhood of New York, with 

 their crops full of rice, which they must have col- 

 lected in the fields of Georgia and Carolina, these 

 districts being the nearest in which they could have 

 procured a supply of that kind of food. As their 

 power of digestion is so great that they will decom- 

 pose food entirely in twelve hours, they must, in that 

 case, have travelled between three and four hundred 

 miles in six hours, which shows their speed to be, at an 

 average, about one mile in a minute. A velocity such 

 as this would enable one of these birds, were it so 

 inclined, to visit the European continent in less than 

 three days. 



" This great power of flight is seconded by as great 

 a power of vision, which enables them, as they travel 

 at that swift rate, to inspect the country below, dis- 

 cover their food with facility, and thus attain the 

 object for which their journey has been undertaken. 

 This I have also proved to be the case, by having 

 observed them, when passing over a sterile part of 

 the country, or one scantily furnished with food 

 suited to them, keep high in the air, flying with an 

 * Bingley, Anira. Biogr. ii. 361. 



