THE LIVING WORLD. 
3i7 
The Carrier Pigeon, in which at least six species are included, have been 
of great service to man, and would no donbt be more generally utilized if the 
telegraph had not been invented. They are still employed, however, to convey 
messages, being especially serviceable in time of war. 
Allusions to carrier pigeons are very frequent in the ancient classic writers, 
and in the Arabic poets. Anacreon informs us that he held a correspondence 
with his charming Bathillus by means of a pigeon. And it is related by HHian 
that Taurosthenes, a victor in the Olympian games, dispatched a pigeon stained 
with purple, to announce his triumph to his father, then on an island in ^Egina. 
Pliny also narrates that a correspondence by means of pigeons was carried 
on during the siege of Modena, between Decimus, Brutus and Hirtius. “ Of 
what avail,” says he, “ were sentinels, circumvallations, or nets obstructing the 
rivers, when intelligence could be conveyed by aerial messengers ?” In the cru¬ 
sades, the practice was tried by the besieged inhabitants of Tyre, but with less 
j, success. The besiegers had observed pigeons frequently hovering over the city, 
and began to suspect that these birds were messengers. Having contrived to 
i seize one, they loaded it with false intelligence, in consequence of which they 
obtained possession of the place. A regular system of posting by means of 
carrier pigeons was established in the twelfth century by the Sultan Noureddin 
Mahmoud. It was afterwards improved and extended, and continued till Bag¬ 
dad fell into the hands of the Mongols in 1258. Sir John Mandeville, who 
travelled in the fourteenth century, alludes to such a system as practised by 
the Turkish government. It was described at a somewhat later period as being 
1 carried on by means of lofty towers, erected at the distance of about thirty miles 
apart, and provided with a proper number of pigeons. Sentinels kept watch 
, in these towers to receive the birds and to transmit the intelligence which they 
had brought by others. The notice was inscribed on a thin slip of paper, 
enclosed in a gold box of small dimensions and as thin as the paper itself, 
suspended to the neck of the bird ; the hour of arrival and departure was 
marked at each successive tower, and, for greater security, a duplicate was always 
I dispatched two hours after the first. No such regular system now exists in 
the Turkish dominions, but carrier pigeons are still much used there. In 
Aleppo, during the last century, carrier pigeons were in constant employment 
for the purpose of acquainting the merchants with the arrival of their vessels 
at Scandaroon. The impatience of the pigeon to see its young was here taken 
advantage of, as an additional stimulus to procure its quick return. They 
would travel from Alexandretta in ten hours, and from Bagdad (thirty days’ 
I journey) in two days. From Scandaroon, which was distant forty leagues, they 
I required only from two hours and half to four hours. Towards the end of the 
'last century the employment of pigeons from Alexandretta and Bagdad was dis- 
| continued on account of the frequent destruction of them by the Curd robbers. 
'The practice was more recently in vogue among the Dutch merchants, for the 
[purpose of anticipating the ordinary means of conveyance in the receipt of stock 
'intelligence, by which they often realized considerable sums. 
BURROWING BIRDS. 
I have already given a brief description of the burrowing habits of the sand- 
marten, having to include' that bird with the swallow family; but there are sev¬ 
eral other burrowers which for want of distinct or appropriate classification may 
be properly noticed under the above head. Indeed, classification at best is but 
