CHAPTER LV. 



THE ANTWERP CARRIER PIGEON. 



The well-known love of pigeons generally for their homes, has been taken 



advantage of from the earliest ages by making nse of them as messengers. 



The flying fancier can point to Anacreon's "Ode to the Carrier Pigeon," 



written twenty-five centuries ago, as a proof of the existence of his fancy 



in early times : 



Tell me ■why, my sweetest dove, 



Thus your humid pinions move ? 



T * * * 



Curious stranger ! I belong 

 To the bard of Teinn song; 

 "With his mandate now I fly 

 To the nymph of azvire eye. 



Throughout history there are records of the use of carrier pigeons as 

 messengers to and from beleaguered cities ; from the amphitheatre, to tell 

 the result of the sports or combats ; from caravans, to announce their 

 setting out or arrival. Many passages from mediaeval writers have 

 recently been brought to light regarding their employment, and if in 

 modern times the telegraph has superseded them in Europe as sw^ft 

 carriers of news, railways have afforded such facile means of training 

 them, that probably at no other period of the world's history, have such 

 immense numbers of these birds been kept by sweepstakes and other 

 fliers, as at the present time. 



The subject itself being without the scope of my scheme, my remarks 

 on it will be more general than particular. A refereDce to my chapter 

 on the literature connected with pigeons will show that many books have 

 been published here and abroad on this subject, which is of such a special 

 character, and outside the pigeon fancy proper, that an exhaustive treatise 

 on it would occupy more space here than could be found for it ; and, 

 after all, it would be chiefly a compilation from what has been already 



