To turn from swallows to pigeons. The power of pigeons on the wing is proverbial. All trained birds of this species have two qualifications in a marked degree. The first is speed; the second long and sustained powers of flight. This proposition can be amply demonstrated, and the following are some of the most remarkable records. On the 6th of October, 1850, Sir John Ross despatched a pair of young pigeons from Assistance Bay, a little west of Wellington Sound; and on October 13th a pigeon made its appearance at the dovecote in Ayrshire, Scotland, whence Sir John had the pair he took out. The distance direct between the two places is two thousand miles. An instance is on record of a pigeon flying twenty-three miles in eleven minutes; and another flew from Rouen to Ghent, one hundred and fifty miles, in an hour and a half. An interesting incident of flight is the case of a pigeon which, in 1845, fell wounded and exhausted at Vauxhall Station, then the terminus of the South-Western Railway. It bore a message to the effect that it was one of three despatched to the Duke of Wellington from Ichaboe Island, two thousand miles away. The message was immediately sent on to his Grace, and by him acknowledged. In a pigeon competition some years ago, the winning bird flew from Ventnor to Manchester, two hundred and eight miles, at the rate of fifty-five miles an hour. As an experiment a trained pigeon was recently dispatched from a northern newspaper office with a request that it might be liberated for its return journey at 9.45 a.m. It reached home at 1.10 p.m. having covered in the meantime one hundred and forty miles, flying at the rate of forty miles an hour. In the north pigeons have long been used to convey messages between country houses and market towns; and in Russia they are now being employed to convey negatives of photographs taken in balloons. The first experiment of the kind was made from the cupola of the Cathedral of Isaac, and the subject photographed was the Winter Palace. The plates were packed in envelopes impenetrable to light, and then tied to the feet of the pigeons, which safely and quickly carried them to the station at Volkovo. Here is another interesting instance of speed and staying power. The pigeons in this case flew from Bordeaux to Manchester, and not only beat all existing records, but flew more than seventy miles further than anything previously attempted by English flyers. The winning bird flew at the rate of eighteen hundred and seventy-nine yards a minute, or over sixty-four miles an hour, and that for a distance of one hundred and forty-two and a half miles. The same club has flown birds distances of six hundred and thirteen, and six hundred and twenty-five miles. These latter, however, were several days in returning, and in their case the only wonder is that they could accomplish the distance at all. The following is still more interesting, as it entailed a race between birds and insects. A