HOMING PIGEONS.
WHEN Members of Parliament make matches with pigeons brought from their constituencies, and get Ministers of State to open the baskets to let the pigeons fly, the pastime of racing with these interesting and puzzling birds occupies a different position from that of, say, a dozen years ago. The papers during the past few days have been full of discussion and correspondence on the problem pre. sented by the racing pigeon's powers of flight and ability to find its way home over long distances, and, sensually happens in such cases, many of the opinions put forward are conflicting and some of them mutually contradictory—at least, that is the impression they convey to the humble inquirer after troth. What is the secret of the racing pigeon ? "The return of pigeons over long distances is due to training, education, and experience," says the editor of the Basing Pigeon, one of the papers exclusively devoted to the sport and "the fancy." Memory, another writer suggests; but memory of what ? "A pigeon travels solely by sight," writes a breeder and trainer. " On a fine day when properly on the wing a pigeon can see a distance of from sixty to eighty miles." To another it seems "impossible that a pigeon always travels solely by sight," He saw the race of 1867 from Rome to Brussels, in which the birds bad to make their way for the first four hundred miles out of the seven hundred and fifty over unknown country; they might only be trained over half the entire distance. The bird which came in second alighted in his presence, and he gave £10 for it. However, this experience does not convince Mr. Walter Winans, who writes to state that what guides the homing pigeon "is entirely a matter of sight and memory, and has nothing to do with instinct, a word behind which anything which people do not happen to understaod is sheltered." Is there, then, no instinct in the pigeon which tells it to fly home ? It is a little difficult to separate the meaning of the word from other faculties possessed by the homing pigeon. What Mr. Winans really does is to ask, in effect, for a definition of the word. It is certainly not satisfactory to be fobbed off with the word "instinct" as explaining everything; it is no more convincing than was the Greek philosopher who, searching for a formula to explain the mystery of creation, decided against the formulas "all is water" and "sills fire," and put forward his own theory that the mainspring of every- thing was "something indefinite."
But even if it is decided that pigeons flying home are guided chiefly or solely by sight and memory, and even if it be admitted that on a fine day a pigeon well up in the air can see a distance of sixty or eighty miles—a point which the pro. gross of aviation alone can establish by direct evidence—still the problem of the racing pigeon is not wholly solved. How is it that on certain days, when the conditions are apparently ideal, pigeons will not fly far, or lose their way, or fail altogether ? A writer in the Homing Pigeon discusses an interesting theory which may account to some extent fm these failures, and which may be connected in some obscure way with the old theory of magnetism. In a recent race there were large numbers of failures which were thought to be due to disturbance of the atmosphere by thunderstorms which were taking place while the race was in progress. The birds, according to this theory, were "disorientated"; and as evidence that this is something more than a vague possibility, the writer in the Homing Pigeon quotes from a report on the effect of "wireless" on birds engaged in racing : "Observations made in the sections of the world where there are many wireless stations indicate that birds are disturbed in a singular way by the wireless waves. lb is stated that gulls are apparently the principal sufferers, but that also largo numbers of doves are in some way pre- vented from finding their way home when there are wireless stations in the line of flight." It is not possible to dismiss offhand statements of evidence of this kind, or to deny that they lend strength to the writer's contention that atmospheric disturbances may account for the failure of faculties which we do not yet understand. Thunderstorms, as he points out, are only the culminating manifestation of forces which have long been gathering. "This gathering together of forces may have gone on under a brilliant sun, a cloudless sky, an apparently calm and perfectly clear atmosphere, conditions believed to be eminently suitable to racing." He goes on to quote from Ilia own experience. "How often have pigeon races, flown under apparently idea, conditions, proved disastrous to a degree ? How often have we attributed these failures to a deterrent wind or a blazing dry atmosphere ?" He himself believes that nothing is more disas- trous to pigeons than a prevailing north-east wind, in which the birds" fail to win home through sheer physical incapacity and a sapping of their vital energies." Well, there are few of us who are at their best in a north-east wind, either in winter or in heat and drought. But the writer in the Homing Pigeon asks us to look much deeper than the mere depressing influence of a wind, and if we like to accept his explanation of the influence of waves of ether, we may reflect that there are other bird problems, not leas puzzling than that of the racing pigeon, which still await solution, and which it may happen some day that we shall be examining in the light of some new discovery of waves and currents. There is the problem of migration, and the extra powers and faculties which a bird obtains from somewhere at the two migrating seasons of the year. How is it that a bird like the landrail- if it is flushed in a field by a shooting-party in Septern, ber, cannot fly more than a few yards, but in October can cross a continent ? And why is it more wonderful that a pigeon should find its way to its home hundreds of miles from the place where it is liberated from a basket, than that a swallow or a cuckoo year after year, on almost the same day, should find its way from the tropics to the same few yards of English countryside ? Certainly the migrant bird in spring and autumn does not find its way by sight and memory. Why should it be unthinkable that some similar condition or concurrence of conditions of atmosphere may guide or impel the homing pigeon alike with the horning swallow? When we know more, perhaps we shall hesitate to assert so roundly that this or that is impossible. The racing pigeon problem, after all, is only part of the greater problem of the bird creation as a whole.
There are certain very obvious reasons which may account for the failure of pigeons to reach their homes, apart from all questions of obscure atmospheric disturbances. The pastime of flying pigeons has become national, and pigeon fanciers increase in number every year. It is only natural that with this increase there should be an increase somewhere in the ranks of the pigeons' enemies. One set of human beings sees its opportunity of livelihood—sordid enough, no doubt—in the amusements of another set, and so in competition with the fancier there are the shooter and the trapper, the one on the lcok-out for a meal easily gained, without questions asked, the other catering for the requirements of that not very sport- ing individual, the pigeon-shot. The trapper is a person of whom it would be satisfactory to make an example; unfor- tunately he is less easily caught than a pigeon. Other racing birds come to ends which must be more or less expected and calculated for as a risk not to be avoided. The numbers of lost birds which are reported as having alighted on boats and ships are an indication of the greater number which can find no resting-place but the water. Finally, there is the end ordained by Nature herself. The pigeons fighting in from the sea are caught by hawks. The writer once saw ono of these tragedies when fishing at sea a short distance from a coast of cliffs. A pigeon came beating in from the south; hundreds of miles away it had started, and it was perhaps nearly home. Behind and high above it sailed a greater bird—one of the peregrine falcons that nest in those cliffs. The pigeon knew it was pursued; its wings carried it more and more weakly ; plainly there was no hope. Just as it reached the cliff the great hawk above it stooped and struck, and a moment afterwards sat over blood and feathers sect= on its pinnacle above the tide.
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