80 PIGEONS AND THE PIGEON FANCY J 



A. M. All of them had flown home from the south of 

 France but none had ever been farther. No bird reached 

 home that month, nor on the first of Aug., nor the second, 

 but on the third there arrived, at a town near Liege, the 

 first messenger from the Eternal City, at 1.55 in the after- 

 noon. If this pigeon had flown in a straight line, it must 

 have crossed the Apennines and the Alps at an altitude of 

 at least 7000 feet ; but it is thought probable that it kept 

 to the west of these mountains, skirting the coast and 

 entering France by the way of Nice. The second bird 

 came in on the same day at evening; the third, the day 

 following, Aug. 4 ; the fourth, Aug. 6 ; the fifth and sixth, 

 Aug. 10 ; seventh, Aug. 11 ; eighth, Aug. 12 ; ninth, Aug. 

 18, nearly a month after starting ; and the tenth on Sept. 

 11, to Maestricht. Of the 200 birds liberated, 180 never 

 returned. 



The following facts, selected from a mass of material, 

 may be interesting. Mr. Van Opstal, a Belgian, living 

 in New York City, writes me that the longest distance 

 flown in the United States is about 725 miles. The 

 pigeon which performed this feat was owned in Cleveland, 

 O., and was bred from a pair imported from Brussels. A 

 Newark bird has flown about 700 miles, but the time oc- 

 cupied was about four weeks. In the summer of 1883, 

 pigeons flew from Columbus, O., and arrived home at 

 Newark, N. J., 460 miles away, on the same day they 

 were liberated. Mr. Van Opstal writes that a distance of 

 more than 550 or 600 miles seems to be too much for 

 homing pigeons, from one to six weeks being spent in 

 accomplishing that distance, and 75 per cent of the pig- 

 eons getting lost; while they often return 500 to 525 miles 

 in a single day, and only 12 per cent get lost. They 

 have flown from Steubenville, O., over the Alleghanies to 



