THE FLIGHT OP BIKDS. 



Bailroad Speed is a Trifle, Even to the 

 Little Fellows. 



A recent flig'ht of carrier pigeons from 

 the Shetland isles to London brought 

 out a sustained average speed of 37 

 miles an hour for 16 hours. This, how- 

 ever. Included stops for rests and prob- 

 ably a good deal of circling to spy out 

 the way, for a pigeon does not fly 

 straight to the mark. 



Better speed was once made from 

 Paris to Spa— 250 miles— in five hours, 

 but even this gives no hint of what a 

 pigeon could do over a measured 10 

 miles. Some authorities put their speed 

 as high as 100 miles an hour. 



Sir Ralph Payne Galloway estimates 

 the flight of a teal duck at 140 miles 

 an hour, but this again is doubtless in 

 excess of the truth. It is well known 

 that when gales exceed 40 miles an 

 hour only the strongest flying birds can 

 make much headway against the wind. 

 Any one who has traveled at a mile a 

 minute on the pilot of an engine knows 

 that the air resistance is felt as an al- 

 most crushing force. 



Audubon once shot in Louisiana some 

 pigeons in whose crops he found rice of . 

 a kind which couldn't have been eaten 

 nearer than South Carolina, 350 miles 

 away. From the state of digestion of 

 the rice he concluded that it had been 

 six hours earlier. Hence he figured out 

 a speed of a mile a minute for the 

 whole distance, though manifestly such 

 compulations cannot be very reliable. 

 He placed the speed of wild ducks at 45 

 1 milea aa hour.— (Ex. 



