In July, 1877, a carrier-pigeon tried conclusions with a railway train.
The bird was a Belgian voyageur, bred at Woolwich, and “homed” to a house
in Cannon Street, City. The train was the Continental mail-express timed
not to stop between Dover and Cannon Street Station. The pigeon,
conveying an urgent message from the French police, was tossed through
the railway carriage window as the train moved from the Admiralty Pier,
the wind being west, the atmosphere hazy, but the sun shining. For more
than a minute the bird circled round till it attained an altitude of
about half-a-mile, and then it sailed away Londonwards. By this time the
engine had got full steam on, and the train was tearing away at the rate
of sixty miles an hour; but the carrier was more than a match for it.
Taking a line midway between Maidstone and Sittingbourne, it reached home
twenty minutes before the express dashed into the station; the train
having accomplished seventy-six-and-a-half miles to the pigeon’s seventy,
but being badly beaten for all that.
—_All the Year Round_.