90 
THE OSTRICH. 
convey letters or small packets from one place to another. 
The rapidity of their flight is very wonderful. Leithgow 
assures us that one of them will carry a letter from Babylon 
to Aleppo (which, to a man, is usually thirty days’ journey) 
in forty-eight hours. To measure their speed with some 
degree of exactness, a gentleman many years ago, on a 
trifling wager, sent a Carrier Pigeon from London, by the 
coach, to a friend at Bury St. Edmond’s ; and along with it 
a note, desiring that the Pigeon, two days after its arrival 
there, might be thrown up precisely when the town clock 
struck nine in the morning. This was accordingly done, 
and the Pigeon arrived in London at half-past eleven o’clock 
of the same morning, having flown seventy-two miles in two 
hours and a half. From the instant of its liberation, its 
flight is directed through the clouds, at a great height, to 
its home. By an instinct altogether inconceivable, it darts 
onward, in a straight line, to the very spot whence it was 
taken, but how it can direct its flight so exactly will pro- 
bably for ever remain unknown to us. 
THE OSTKICH. ( Struthio camelus.') 
We place the Ostrich at the head of the fifth order of 
birds, the Grallatores , or Waders. The Ostrich is a native 
of Africa. It is one of the tallest of birds j as when it 
