76 RAPIDITY OF FLIGHT. 



Ireland, in 1842, where a bird of this species belonging to 

 Thomas Bernard, Esq., was let go in the town at eleven 

 o'clock in the forenoon, with a note appended to it, directing 

 dinner to be ready at his residence at Castle Bernard at a 

 given time, as he purposed being home that day, which 

 message reached the appointed destination in eleven minutes, 

 having travelled 23 miles Irish in that wonderfully short 

 space of time, or, in other words, at the rate of 125 J miles an 

 hour. These pigeons, of which Mr. Bernard had a large 

 flock, were so domesticated, that he could handle them as he 

 pleased, and so very tractable were they, that whenever he 

 called, they attended promptly. 



A curious way of guessing at the speed of a Pigeon's 

 flight has been noticed in America. Birds have been shot, 

 which, on opening them, were found to have fed on coffee- 

 berries, so fresh, that they could not have been in the 

 stomach above four or five hours ; but, as the nearest part 

 of the country known to produce coffee was some hundreds 

 of miles distant, it was calculated that they must have flown 

 at the rate of sixty or seventy miles per hour. 



But besides this great speed, many, even of those ap- 

 parently least calculated for continued flight, can remain on 

 the wing for a much longer time than we are apt to imagine, 

 from seeing them slowly and heavily waddling, as in the 

 case of farm-yard Ducks and Geese, or of a Sparrow, hopping 

 leisurely from bough to bough, or flitting from thence to the 

 house-top. Thus the tame domestic Geese, belonging to 

 several Cossack villages, near the river Don, in Kussia, leave 

 their homes in March or April, as soon as the ice breaks up, 

 and take flight in a body to the more northerly lakes, the 

 nearest of which must be five or six hundred miles off, where 

 they breed and constantly reside during the summer ; but in 

 the beginning of winter, the parent bird returns with their 

 young ones, each alighting with its brood at the door to 

 which it belongs. That flights of this sort are not confined 

 to Eussia, we may learn from the following instance, cor- 

 roborating the fact just mentioned. A gentleman walking 

 near Aberdeen, in Scotland, one morning, during a heavy 



