patriarch in triumph. Emphatic symbol of peace! Commemorated through
ages, it is still the symbol of peace. Along with the fig tree and vine,
it is associated, as the emblem of man's inheritance, and in the
geography of its locality, the patriarch would hail the plain on which
it flourished, and from which it was borne, as the place of his former
abode. The dove would return, though the olive had emerged, because no
food had as yet been provided. How long this ambassador of peace was
absent, we cannot tell: we are only informed that the dove returned in
the _evening_. If the winged messenger was despatched early in the day,
it is not improbable that the delightful trophy was obtained from Mount
Olivet, where, according to the late Dr. Clarke, 'the olive still
vindicates its parental soil.' In considering the question of the
geographical distribution of plants, this would likely be the nearest
olive plane from the mountains of Armenia. It may be remarked also, that
the olive remarkably synchronizes with the habits of the dove; since,
according to Dr. Chandler, in his Travels in Greece, as soon as the
olive matures its berries, vast numbers of doves, among other birds,
repair for food to the olive groves. It cannot be irrelevant to remind
our readers of the habits of the _columba tabellaria_, or the carrier
pigeon, so called from the office to which it has been applied, viz.
that of carrying letters, in the Levant, &c. Those of Mesopotamia are
the most famous in the world, and the Babylonian carrier pigeon is
employed even on ordinary occasions at Bagdad. The geographical
locality, therefore, of the carrier pigeon, it is interesting to
remember, is in the vicinity of those very mountains where the ark
finally rested. With us the carrier pigeon is an exotic, and is now
acclimated, or naturalized. Carrier pigeons fly at the rate of fifty
miles an hour.--'Napoleon,' the name of one of the carrier pigeons which
was despatched from London a short time ago, at four o'clock A.M.,
reached Liege, in France, about ten o'clock in the day. Mr. Audubon