Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/386

370 the end of the empire. In the middle ages the news of the capture of Damietta by St. Louis was announced to the Sultan by this means. At a later date pigeons rendered important services in sieges like those of Haarlem and Leyden. The pigeons of St. Mark have been taken care of since the thirteenth century in recognition of the services which they rendered to the republic during the siege of Candia by Dandolo. During the continental blockade the financiers of the continent kept up communications with their London correspondents by pigeons. After normal national life was restored to Europe and as the improvement of communications went on, the service of the pigeon post was neglected till the siege of Paris in 1870 called it to life again. But the fishermen of Boulogne, Dieppe, and Saint-Malo still send pigeons forward in advance of their boats as they are returning home, with reports of what their catch has been.

The birds that stock our pigeon houses are of the Belgian breed, which has been developed by centuries of selection from the rock pigeon. This breed differs much from its wild ancestors in habits and instincts. The carrier pigeon is not quite so large as the ring pigeon, but has a more expressive head, more elegant form, and a more brilliant and more varied plumage. The training of the young pigeons begins when they are three or four months old. They are let loose at gradually increasing distance, all in one direction, from the pigeon houses. At six months of age one should be able to return from a distance of two hundred miles at a speed of fifty miles an hour. At the end of the second year it should come back from distances of more than three hundred miles, and of the third year from six hundred miles. Pigeons return more rapidly from places lying in the direction in which they have been trained. Training in one direction has some advantages and several disadvantages in practice; but as the trainer of to-day is not seeking useful results, but simply to beat in the races, he adopts the method best adapted to his purpose. As the races at the same city always take place over the same course, why take the trouble to give the birds a various training? Under the stimulus of the races and through the training for them, a great improvement has been effected in the quality and powers of pigeons.

Two interesting questions present themselves concerning the length of time during which the pigeon can recollect the place of his home and the distance from which he is able to find his way back to it. Some birds have found their way home after five years' absence; and it is generally considered that good birds can be depended upon for six months. Pigeons have returned from Vienna and from Rome to Brussels, and others, sold to be carried away to America, have made their way back to their original owner in Belgium.