My train had already started, when the speaker—an earnest-faced, enthusiastic-looking working-man—breathless with running, leapt on to the step, and after a hurried glance round the compartment, popped a paper bag into my arms and disappeared.
‘Let it off at Leicester?’ What did the man mean? Did he take me for one of the Fenian brotherhood? Had he handed me an ‘infernal machine’ with which to destroy Leicester railway station? I was taken aback for a moment, but only for a moment, for something rustled inside the bag, and I ‘keeked’ in at a corner.
‘You’re there, are you?’ I said sotto voce, as the bright, inquiring eye of a blue homing pigeon met my gaze.
The man’s meaning was plain enough now. Leicester was our first stopping-place. I was to throw the bird up there—which I duly did—and knowing the hour the train was due there, its owner could thus judge of its flying powers from the time it took to regain the loft in London.
By many people, it is believed that the homing pigeon is guided in its wonderful flights by some special instinct; others think that sight alone is the bird’s guide. In the far-distant past, long before railways, telegraphs, or telephones were dreamt of, pigeons were used to convey intelligence of all kinds from distant quarters; and even in our own day and in times of peace, homing or carrier pigeons are found exceedingly useful as message-bearers in a hundred ways needless to name.
In time of war, their utility can hardly be overrated. The ‘Paris pigeon-post’ of the Franco-German War of 1870-71 is well known. During the siege, when the gayest city in the world was closely beleaguered by the Prussians, and all communication with the outside world was totally cut off, homing pigeons brought to Paris by balloons, found their way back to Tours and other places, bearing with them news of the beleaguered city. How welcome they must have been to the thousands of people who had friends and relatives in Paris at that time! The messages carried by the pigeons were written or printed, then photographed on thin paper, the words being so reduced in size that it required the aid of a powerful magnifier to decipher them. These tiny documents were carried in small sealed quills, carefully fastened to the centre tail-feathers. From the very moment of the arrival of the first homing pigeon, the Paris pigeon-post was firmly established as an institution; and in times of war among all civilised nations, the aërial voyageur will in future doubtless play a most important part.
We have already in England a large number of clubs devoted to pigeon-flying or pigeon-racing; but it is in Brussels that the sport is carried out to the fullest extent. In Belgium alone, there are at this moment nearly twenty-five hundred clubs, and every town, village, or district in the whole country goes in for its weekly race. The birds are sent off on the Friday or Saturday by special trains, and are liberated in clouds of thousands on the Sunday mornings, two, three, four, or even five hundred miles from home.
I know many people in this country who have as their special hobby the breeding and flying of pigeons in a private way, quite independent of clubs—people who never go very far away from home without taking a pigeon or two along with them, to send back with news of their safe arrival, or their success or non-success in matters of business. I had the following told me by a friend, and have no reason to doubt the truth of it. A gentleman of rather shy disposition came down from London to a town not a hundred miles from Warwick, bent on proposing to a young lady, with whom he was greatly in love. She was the daughter of a well-to-do landowner, and a fancier of Antwerp carriers. The Londoner, however, lacked the courage or opportunity of popping the question. He was bold enough, though, before taking leave, to beg the loan of one of his lady-love’s pets, just ‘to tell her of his safe arrival in town.’ The bird returned from London the same day; and in the little quill, it bore to its mistress a message—that, after all, might more simply and naturally have been conveyed by lip—to wit, a declaration and a proposal. A more artful though innocent way of getting out of a difficulty could hardly have been devised. It was successful too.
The homing pigeon of the present day is not only remarkably fond of the cot and scenes around it wherein it has been bred and reared, but fond of its owner as well, and exceedingly sagacious and docile. The power of wing of this bird is very great, and emulates the speed of the swiftest train, over five hundred miles being done sometimes in less than twelve hours.
Now, although, in our foggy and uncertain climate, we can never hope to attain such results in pigeon-flying as they do in Belgium or sunny France, still, the breeding and utilising of these useful birds deserve far more attention than we in this country give them. It is in the hope that some of the readers of this Journal may be induced to adopt the breeding and flying of these pigeons as a fancy or hobby, that I now devote the rest of this article to a few practical hints about their general management.