vit FLIGHT 269 
much in excess, not only of anything achieved in any 
other race during that. year, but of the velocity of any 
of the birds competing in the same race, that I cannot 
help hesitating to accept it as trustworthy. The 
next best record for the year was seventy-one miles 
per hour in an eighty-two mile race Even when the 
conditions are most favourable, when there is a tail- 
wind blowing—ze., a wind carrying the birds towards 
their destination—sixty miles an hour is a very 
exceptional pace in a race of 100 miles and over, 
When the weather is all that could be wished, fifty 
miles per hour or slightly more is a velocity more 
often recorded. In 1883 the average velocity of the 
winning birds in eighteen of the races of the United 
Counties Flying Club was thirty-six miles per hour, 
the fastest having maintained a rate of fifty-five miles 
for a distance of 208. 
In France, the experiment has been made of 
employing Swallows in place of Homing Pigeons. 
The idea is a very ancient one, for Pliny tells us that 
a certain Roman knight who wished to let his friends 
at Volaterre in Tuscany know who had won the 
chariot races used to take with him to Rome—a 
distance of 130 miles—some Swallows which he let 
loose after dyeing them the colour of the winner Of 
the experiments in France I have not been able to 
obtain any account at first hand. One flight is 
reported to have been a very grand one, far surpassing 
anything credited to a Homing Pigeon. A Swallow 
was taken from Roubaix to Paris, a distance of 258 
1 See Burgess’s Homing Pigeon Fanciers’ Annual for 1892, 
2 Pliny, Matural History, x. 34 
