length it descended, and I could hear the whirr of its strong wings. The
wings ceased to beat and the pigeon slanted downwards in a curve, its
head lower than its wide tail. Then the little head gradually rose and
the tail fell; the curve had changed, the pace slackened; the pigeon was
calculating with all its brain; eyes, wings, tail and feet were being
co-ordinated to the resolution of an intricate mechanical problem. The
pinkish claws seemed to grope--and after an instant of hesitation the
thing was done, the problem solved; the pigeon, with delicious
gracefulness, had established equilibrium on the ridge of a pigeon-cote,
and folded its wings, and was peering about with strange motions of its
extremely movable head. Presently it flew down to the leads, waddled to
and fro with the ungainly gestures of a fat woman of sixty, and
disappeared into the cote. At the same moment the boy who had been
dismissed from the sub-editor's room ran forward and entered the cote by
a wire-screened door.

"Handy things, pigeons!" said the doctor as we approached to examine the
cote. Fifty or sixty pigeons were cooing and strutting in it. There was
a protest of wings as the boy seized the last arriving messenger.

"Give it here!" Buchanan ordered.

The boy handed over a thin tube of paper which he had unfastened from
the bird's leg. Buchanan unrolled it and showed it to me. I read:
"Midland Federation. Axe United, Macclesfield Town. Match abandoned
after half-hour's play owing to fog. Three forty-five."

"Three forty-five," said Buchanan, looking at his watch. "He's done the
ten miles in half an hour, roughly. Not bad. First time we tried pigeons
from as far off as Axe. Here, boy!" And he restored the paper to the