14 columbidjE. 



my attention, was amid the enchanting scenery of the Sabine 

 hills, about the celebrated cascade of the Anio at Tivoli, where, 

 numerous as domestic pigeons in a well-stocked dove-cot, they 

 appeared flying in and out of the gloomy recesses of the rocks 

 close to where the mass of waters was precipitated.* The cliffs 

 above these falls are crowned by the ruins of the Corinthian tem- 

 ple of Yesta ; from the neighbouring hill-sides the great aloe and 

 the myrtle spring spontaneously, while the most antique of olive 

 trees, many of them even grotesque from the decrepitude of age, 

 form the chief features of the foliage.f Afar, over the dreary 

 Campagna, Rome, once mistress of the world, appears. 



In the snow-white caves adjacent to Dunluce Castle, near the 

 Giant's Causeway, and those darkly pierced in the long range of 

 stupendous cliffs at the Horn in Donegal, which boldly confront 

 the Atlantic, southward to those of Sphacteria whose precipices 

 are laved by the waters of the eastern Mediterranean, I have 

 remarked that the rock-dove equally finds a home ; as it likewise 

 does in islets from the high and rugged promontory of Oe, in 

 Islay, off the south-western coast of Scotland, to the " Isles of 

 Greece." 



Notes on Tame Pigeons. 

 The following paragraph oil carrier pigeons appeared in the Leinster Express 

 newspaper in Dec. 1842 : — " One of these pigeons was let loose from Palmerston- 

 house, near Chapelizod, the seat of the Earl of Donoughmore, when it accomplished 

 the journey to Castle Bernard, which is upwards of sixty-two miles, in two hours ; 

 yet the flight was much impeded, as the day was both dark and hazy, accompanied 

 with a strong head wind at the time. At the late fair of Ballinasloe, Thomas Ber- 

 nard, Esq., took with him one of these birds, which he let go in the town at eleven 

 o'clock a.m. with a note appended, directing dinner to be ready at Castle Bernard at 

 the given time, as he purposed being home that day, when the bird took its flight, 

 and the message was delivered in eleven minutes after, having travelled twenty-three 

 miles Irish in that wonderful short space of time, or, iu other words, at the rate of 

 125^ miles an hour. These pigeons, of which Mr. Bernard has a large flock, are so 

 domesticated, that he can handle them as he pleases, and so very tractable are they, 

 that whenever he calls, they attend the call promptly." 



* This was in August 1 826, when the falls were in their integrity. A few 

 months afterwards an inundation occurred, which completely changed the character 

 of the scene, and the river has since been turned into a new channel. 



f Some authors have considered these the identical trees described by Pliny. 



