In Black and White, Mulvaney Stories, The Day's Work, and a long story entitled The Light That Failed. Kipling married an American girl. They have a home near Brattleboro, Vermont, and a home in England. (By permission of Rudyard Kipling.) 1. God of our fathers, known of old, 2. The tumult and the shouting dies- 3. Far-called our navies melt away - Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! 4. If, drunk with sight of power, we loose Or lesser breeds without the law- 5. For heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and iron shard- RUDYARD KIPLING. XXV. THE CARRIER PIGEON. 1. THE carrier pigeon is the subject of many mistakes. In the first place, the names dove and pigeon are generally supposed to be for different birds. In fact, they are simply two names for the same thing. 2. More than that, although at least five hundred species of wild pigeons are described by naturalists, all the different kinds known to us are only different forms of the same bird, the common rock pigeon of Europe. These changes have been brought about by selection. For example, all pigeons have a natural spread to the tail. Some of them have a little more than others. Put these by themselves and their young will be marked in the same way. In this way a distinct breed can be gotten. 3. The carrier pigeon is the result of just such selection. All pigeons are attached to the place where they are reared. The carrier pigeon is brought by selection to have a very great love of its home. Hence the name given it of "homing pigeon." 4. The love of home would not, of course, be enough in itself to make the pigeon a messenger. It must also be able to find its home when taken from it. It is generally supposed that a carrier pigeon has naturally this gift of home-finding. The real fact is, that a carrier has to be trained to find its way home by being taken away, at first very short distances, and then by increasing the distance taught to find its way home, no matter where it is taken. 5. Another false notion is, that a carrier can be sent from place to place. Indeed, several very pretty stories have been written in which pigeons are spoken of as flying to and from persons whose lives, perhaps, depended upon the messages carried back and forth. The truth is, the carrier is only a homing pigeon. It will seek home from any place, but will seek no place from home. It carries messages but one way. 6. Pictures are not uncommon which show the pigeon carrying about its neck an ordinary envelope. The poor bird could not fly a mile with such a load. The weight of the message cannot be too light, and the usual method of securing it is by binding it about one of the legs. A better way, however, is to secure it about the middle tail-feather. 7. In view of the little weight possible for the carrier to bear, it will seem a rather startling statement that during the siege of Paris by the Germans, when carrier pigeons were used by the besieged to convey intelligence to their friends outside, one pigeon usually carried about four thousand letters. 8. To accomplish such a wonderful feat, each letter was put into cipher and then photographed upon a bit of paper so minute that two hundred of them, we are told, weighed only one-eighth of a grain. 9. Just before the siege began, birds from the provinces were brought into the city; and later, when it was desired to receive as well as to send messages, birds from Paris were sent into the provinces by means of balloons. Of the three hundred and sixty-three pigeons sent out in this way, fifty-seven returned, bringing microscopic photographs of letters, and even of whole newspapers, which were shown to the public with the aid of magic lanterns. 10. Between Paris and Tours, places one hundred and fortyfive miles apart, a regular pigeon post was established. No person was permitted to send more than twenty words, and each word cost twenty cents. One bird sometimes carried five hundred dollars' worth of dispatches. 11. Of course the Germans did what they could to break up the ingenious service. One method which they tried was by training hawks to pursue the pigeons, but the hawks were, in many cases, baffled both by the speed of the pigeons and by the great height to which they rose. 12. Of course, the swiftness of the pigeons varies, some birds being heavy and slow, while others, such as the Antwerps, have been known to fly for twelve hours at the rate of forty miles an hour, and for short distances at the rate of more than a mile a minute. 13. Audubon, our great naturalist, calculated that the common wild pigeon of America flies at the rate of sixty miles an hour. This was partly guess-work, of course, though birds have been shot in New York with grains of rice in their crops which must have been swallowed within a very short time in Georgia. or South Carolina; but the speed of the carrier can be known to a certainty. 14. It must not be supposed that it is only necessary to give a carrier its liberty in order to make it fly for home. Sometimes the bird will make its upward flight, and then return at once to the earth, and refuse to start again. Why this is, nobody knows, although it has been noticed that on a foggy or very windy day the bird is certain not to go. 15. Another mystery is how the bird can know so surely where home is, that, though five hundred miles away, it can make a straight, true flight toward it. The bird may very likely have been taken from its home to its starting-place in a covered cage, and yet, when set at liberty, know exactly where to go. 16. When freed, it begins to mount upward in a spiral course, each time widening its circle until it has reached a very great height. There it seems to take its bearings for a moment, and then to choose the course which, without any deviation, will carry it home. 17. How far the carrier can be made to fly has not yet been determined. In 1868 two hundred birds from Belgium — where the training and flying of pigeons may be called the national amusement were let loose in Rome. The distance to be made was nine hundred miles, and for five hundred miles of the way the country was unknown to the birds. Moreover, the Alps stood in their path, and were undoubtedly not crossed, but avoided. Of the two hundred pigeons, but twenty ever reached home. The winner was about thirteen days and a half on the passage. 18. The attempt has been made to send carrier pigeons home across the Atlantic, but without success. Several birds were started from New York to return to Belgium, but none of them arrived there. 19. Some flew back to the starting-place, some were brought back by vessels upon which they had alighted in mid-ocean in an exhausted condition, and the rest probably perished at sea. 'Tis a bird I love, with its brooding note, JOHN R. CORYELL. -Willis. |