The Warwickshire Herald. — 1894-05-24 (Birmingham, West Midlands, England)

HOMING PIGEONS.  Homing pigeons, says a Field writer, are imagined by most people to return home in obedience to some unerring instinct. Those who are practically acquainted with•these birds know full well that this is altogether a delusion. They return home solely by observatittn. Elevated i great distance in the air, their horizon varies from 50 to 100 miles, and unless they recognise at once objects with which they are familiar, they fly round and round in gradually increasing circles until they discover some object with which they are familiar. That this is the csae every owner of homing pigeons knows quite well, add at the parimencement of each same finds ienecesaary to train them again. Birds flown from Bordeaux to Brussels one year are again trained by stages of the journey during the succeeding year, in order that their recollections of the locality may be refreshed. In the original edition of "Yarrell's British Birds" there was an account of some pigeons that hal been taken to the Arctic regions in one of the polar expeditions. After some months these were supposed to have returned to their home, which, in the meantime, had been dismantled, and the birds Hew away to a neighbouring dovecot. The story was recounted by Yarrell as a true one, but anyone in the slightest degree acquainted with the habits of homing pigeons would know that, having returned to their home from a distance, they would not leave it but remain around the house, and not fly off to another establishment. That some pigeons did come to the house and remain there for a few days Is most probable, but that they were the birds that had flown the distance from the Arctic circle was an entirely erroneous supposition; the pigeons furnished, in fact, another example of the numerous errors that are due to the mistaken identity of animals.  The divining-rod :has again been used in Essex with success, this time on the estate of General Thompson, of Wethersfield Place, near Braintree. Some years ago General Thompson had a field surveyed by an eminent engineer, who, after testing the ground with boring apparatus, expressed an opinion that no water was obtainable there. Hearing, however, of the success of the divining:rod in the Immediate neighbourhood the Genets] invited Mr. H. W. Gold, of Socking, to walk over the field, with the result that at two places which Mr. Golding marked water was found at less than 10ft, from the surface.  After a delay of several months, owing to the sudden disappearance of one of the iron piles in the sea-bed, the operations on the eastern arm of the new harbour at Dover have just been started again. An elaborate system of iron cylinders is now being sunk for all the centre piles, the additional cost of the work being estimated at about £30,000.  At the Belfast Recorder's Court on SaturdAy three men, named Rossborough, Collins, and Mlloon, were sentenced to three years' penal seryituoe for a series of frauds. The two first-named prisone:s were the employes of a Belfast wholesale firm of flour and grain merchants. For several years they had, in conjunction with Wilson, who was also a Sour merchant, carried on a system of thieving from the former's employers, which for a considerable time defied the utmost skill of the detective department. At ureenock James McGrath, a labourer, was remitted to the Sheriff, charged with murder. It was alleged that the prisoner, because his stepson. aged 12 years, took too long on Saturday to deliver a message, beat him so severely that shortly afterwards the boy was found in a chair dead.  Throat Irritation and Cough—Soreness and dryness, tickling, and irritation, inducing cough and affecting UM voice. For them symptoms MO Eppa's Glycerine Jujubes. In contact with the glands at the moment they are monad by the ens of sucking, the Glycerine in these agreeable ode. Notions becomes actively healing. Sold andy in boxes, Md., tins Ls. led., labelled "Josses and Co., Homeopathic Chemists, London." Moore, in his wark on "Nose and Throat Diseasaa." says: "The Glycerine Jujube. prepared by James *pa and Co., ere of undoubted merino as a wrath* cat palliative went.* while Dr. Gorden Holm* Senior Playennan to the Municipal Throat and Mar lairnuay, wine I "Misr arc ._do l, I yes bend your Glycerine Jujubes of conaideedie Ma& in almost all he... of Ikon diem'