Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 January 1910 — THE SPEED OF THE PIGEON. [ARTICLE]

THE SPEED OF THE PIGEON.

Racing pigeons are the fleetest of all creatures. They have maintained a speed of a mile and a half a minute for a hundred miles, according to a writer in Collier’s, and they have flown seven hundred miles between the rising and the setting of the sun. Pigeons have flown a thousand miles back to the home loft. In 1904 a bird covered that distance in five days, two hours and fifteen minutes, proving how unerring is the mysterious homing instinct that will drive them across the continent without swerving. But this test is not true sport. The birds simply hurl themselves against time and space til! they are played out. They can never race again. The r&cer rises into the air with wing pulsations, then, once poised over the starting point, there Is a swifter, shorter beat, and the time Is “hit up” to the third permanent wing rhythm, rapid and steady as a pulse beat, which carries thpm home. They fly three hundred feet high ovsr land, but low over water. Their enemies as they fly are wind, rain, gunners and hawks. They do all their flying between sunrise and sunset, it caught out overnight, they fend for themselves till dawn. The homing instinct is lifelong. During the, Franco-Prussian War the Germans caught a homing pigeon which was on its way into beleaguered Paris. The bird was kept prisoner for ten years. It was then released: It Immediately returned to Its old home.