In this manner the carrier pigeons are practised bit by bit along the whole distance between Paris and Antwerp. They attentively observe, or study, and learn by heart, each conspicuous object which serves them as a land-mark on the way. It is usual to exercise particular pigeons between the two cities, which it is wished to connect by this sort of postal communication; and it is necessary to have a certain number for going, and others for returning. After the birds have been accustomed to inhabit a certain district, and to travel by a particular route, it is not found easy to divert them from their wonted course, and to make them available in any other direction. My friends, the members of the Antwerp Society, assured me that their pigeons had frequently flown from Paris to Antwerp in six or seven hours; consequently in a much shorter time than that in which the same journey is performed by the railway train. By bird’s flight, the distance between the two cities is forty miles (German[1]), and therefore it follows that these carrier pigeons must travel at the rate of from twenty to thirty English miles an hour. It is scarcely conceivable that they should possess the strength of wing and vigour of lungs requisite for such a flight; and it is no unfrequent occurrence for several of them to die on arriving at their journey’s end. In stormy weather the loss of two-thirds of the birds dispatched on such a long flight, is a disaster always to be counted on. It is, therefore, usual to send off a whole flock, all bearing the same intelligence, so as to ensure the chance of one at least reaching its destination. Footnote 1: The German mile includes nearly three and a half English miles.