CHAP, iv.] CARRIERS. CASTLE OF THE DOVES. 127 



Lighthouse, if the one were in a state of siege, and the 

 other fairly in for six weeks had weather. The birds 

 have to he kept and confined in the places whence 

 they may be required to start on any emergency. 



If the points from which intelligence is to be con- 

 veyed are situated at great angular distances from each 

 other and from the central home, different sets of birds 

 have to be maintained. The Pigeon which will tra- 

 verse with practised ease the space from London to 

 Birmingham, may be unable to find its way from 

 Bangor or Glasgow to the same town. 



Carrier Pigeons have been largely employed in con- 

 veying messages across the English Channel ; the 

 Antwerp birds are so celebrated as to be cultivated as a 

 separate sub-race ; and there are few seaport towns on 

 our eastern and southern coast, from Great Yarmouth 

 to Penzance, in which there are not one or two Pigeon- 

 trainers resident, to whose hands a variety of birds are 

 constantly entrusted. It is over seas and desert tracts 

 that Pigeons are the most useful as well as the surest 

 messengers ; in civilized arid thickly-peopled countries 

 they are less needed, and are moreover apt to get 

 entrapped or shot, and their secret stolen from them. 

 Accordingly we find that they have been much em- 

 ployed in the East : our Carrier Pigeons are nothing 

 but an imitation of Oriental example. From the 

 many instances that might be given, we select one 

 less hackneyed than usual. 



" The Castle of Kooshler, or Castle of the Birds (at 

 Bagdad), borrows its name from the Doves, by which an 

 old monk formerly residing at this convent conveyed 

 his letters. The convent crumbled into ruins on the 

 birth-night of the Prophet ; the remains of it go now 



