with the rapidity of some birds. Try to count the pulsations of 
tlio wing of a kingfisher, or of the short-winged puffin— it will be 
found not only impossible to count them, but the wing itself will 
jccome blurred, or lost to the vision, in consequence of its rapid 
motion. 
It IS a matter of considerable difficulty to obtain reliable data as 
lo the actual velocity with which binls travel through the air, 
the speed acquired, however, is certainly very great. Professor 
O wen mentions the historical falcon belonging to Henry the Fourth 
of h ranee, which flew from Fontainbleaii to Malta, a distance of 
1.350 miles in one day, and remarks that “ the flight of a hawk, 
when Its powers are fully exerted, is calculated at about 150 miles 
an hour. He also tells us the eider duck’s usual flight has been 
estimated at the rate of 90 miles an hour.* Audubon estimates 
the thght of the American passenger pigeon at a mile a minute. 
J igcons, he tells us, have been killed in the neighbourhood of New 
York, with their crops full of rice, which they could not have 
collected nearer than the rice-ficlds of Georgia and Carolina. “ As 
their power of digestion is so great that they decompose food 
entirely in twelve hours, they niusL in that case have travelled 
between three and four hundred miles in six hours, which shows 
their speed to be at an average of about one mile in a minute.” 
learn says, “ the trumpeter swan going down wind in a brisk gale, 
cannot fly at a less rate than 100 miles an hour.”f The well-known 
uistinct which prompts the carrier pigeon to return to its home 
immediately upon being set at liberty, should it be carried to a 
dishmce, has been made use of from very early times to convey 
intelligence. Two thousand years ago, according to Diodorus 
Siculus, they were used for this purpose; more recently, five 
hundred years ago, the Turks sent iutelligence by relays of pigeons 
(Stanley), and even now the Electric Telegraph has not quite driven 
them ofl' the road, although it has robbed their occupation of its 
usefulness, and left nothing but the sporting element; in the 
present day they are generally sent up from race-courses, the birds 
being matched against each other for speed. Never having myself 
witnessed the wonderful way in which the bird proceeds to ascer- 
tain the direction it must take in onler to reach its home, I will 
* Todd’s “ Cyclopasdia of Anatomy, ‘ Aves,”’ p. 298. 
t “ I5roderq> Zoo. Recreations,” p. 145. 
