For several years before the extension of the wires overland to Nova Scotia, the newsgatherers of Boston and New York resorted to various devices in order to obtain the earliest reports from Europe. From 1846 to 1850 the revolutionary movements in many of the countries on the continent were of a nature to be especially interesting to the people of the United States, and this stimulated enterprise among the American newspapers. Mr. D.H. Craig, afterward widely known as agent of the Associated Press, conceived the idea of anticipating the news of each incoming ocean-steamer by means of a pigeon-express, which he put into successful operation in the year first named. He procured a number of carrier-pigeons, and several days before the expected arrival of every English mail-steamer took three of them to Halifax. There he boarded the vessels, procured the latest British papers, collated and summarized their news upon thin paper, secured the dispatches thus prepared to the pigeons, and fifty miles or so outside of Boston released the birds. The winged messengers, flying homeward, reached the city far in advance of the steamers, and the intelligence they brought was at once delivered to Mr. W.G. Blanchard, then connected with the Boston press, who had the brief dispatches "extended," put in type, and printed as an "extra" for all the papers subscribing to the enterprise. Sheets bearing the head "New York Herald Extra" were also printed in Boston and sent to the metropolis by the Sound steamers, thus anticipating the arrival of the regular mail. It is interesting, in these days of lightning, to read an account of how the Herald beat its local rivals in getting out an account of the President's Message in 1849. A column synopsis was received by telegraph from New York, and published in the morning edition, and the second edition, issued a few hours later, contained the long document in full, and was put on the street at least a half-hour earlier than the other dailies. How the message was brought from Washington is thus described: J.F. Calhoun, of New Haven, was the messenger, and he started from the capital by rail at two o'clock on the morning of December 24; a steamtug in waiting conveyed him, on his arrival, from Jersey City to New York; a horse and chaise took him from the wharf to the New Haven depot, then in Thirty-second Street, where he mounted a special engine and at 10 P.M. started for Boston. He reached Boston at 6.20 the next morning, after an eventful journey, having lost a half-hour by a derailed tender and an hour and a half by the smashup of a freight-train.