128 HOW CARRIERS FIND THEIR WAY. [CHAP. IT. 



by the name of the Doves. The letter-doves (Koordjer) 

 of Bagdad remained, and became an institution cele- 

 brated in Greece, Arabia, and Persia. The inhabitants 

 of Bagdad feed them together, and separate then the 

 coveys, sending them to Syria, Egypt, and even to 

 Yemen and India, from whence they return with letters 

 written on fine silk paper. There are examples that 

 such a Dove has been sold for five hundred piastres. 

 The merchants of Cairo feed a great number of such 

 Doves to convey letters to (from ?) their correspondents 

 at Damietta, Rosetta, Alexandria, Algiers, Tunis, and 

 Morocco on one side, and to (from ?) Jedda, Yenboo, 

 and Mecca on the other. These Dove messengers are 

 continually under way from and to Bagdad and Cairo, 

 and I saw many of them during my stay in Egypt. It 

 is from them that this convent bears its name." * 



The great puzzle to most persons is, how the Pigeon 

 finds its way through such long distances as we know 

 to be occasionally traversed by it. A correspondent, 

 whose name stands high in the scientific world, guesses 

 that animal magnetism may have something to do with, 

 it. " I should like," he writes, " to inclose a Pigeon 

 in some active galvanic machine, of such a nature, that 

 if a magnet was also inclosed, its poles would be re- 

 versed, and see whether the Pigeon thus transported 

 would find its way home. I can imagine a bird to have 

 a sense of its own diamagnetic condition, and so keep 

 a sort of rough dead reckoning when transported." 



I once asked a Pigeon-fancier whether he believed 

 that there ever existed such a person as an honest 

 Pigeon-dealer; after some consideration, he replied, 



* Southey's Common-Place Book, 2nd Series, p. 447. 



