SWALLOWS AS CARRIERS.

West Coast Times, Issue 7556, 25 November 1889, Page 4

SWALLOWS AS CARRIERS.

When reports were circulated a few days ago that nn ingenious Frenchman was training swallows for the work of carrier pigeons most people put them down to be mere canards ; but for once the sceptical were in the wrong, and 'the swallow as a winged mesaengei has become almost »n accomplished fact, aa will be seen from the details which I subjoin- They are furnished by the trainer himself, M. Jean Desbouvrie, who lives in a village npar Roubaix and who has just been visited by an ornithological friend. It is now more than thirty years since he began his task. He was then a lad of eleven Being I passionately fond of birds, he determined to try his hand on swallows, and to show that, in spite of the universal belief to the contrary, they could be tamed and reared. At that time he served as errand boy to ;his father, and in the course of his rounds I robbed all the neßts he could come across. At length., he succeeded in training a dozen or so to 1 follow him about wherever he went. They would fly round his head and perch on his shoulder* in the open street. To-day be has not only been able to tame them, but also to rear them, to make them keep to their cage, to fly in and out like pigeons, and, what is more extraordinary, to acclimatise them. "If the swallow leaves us at the end of Summer," be Bays, " it is leas from fear of cold than from lack of nourishment. As every body knows, it lives on insects. Now. when the fine season is over tbe eir ceases to be full of insects, and the swallow migrates to .escape starvation. Give him a shelter exposed to the south and food' which he can eafc and ho will remain with us through the winter as in summer." What the food is the trainer reserves to himself as a valuable secret.

M. Desbouvrie has not yet begun to hatch the swallows, which he assures us would be easy for him to do. lie confines himself at present to obtain the young ones from the nesta. The upper atory of his house is set apart to them entirely. There are two rooms ; one is transformed into a large earge, the other adjoining it opens on a balcony, and serves as a kind of ante-chamber. The cage contains twenty young \Arda ; twelve of them ara allowed to go in and out at leisure, the other eight are kept in capitivity and sold to fanciers. The carrier swallows are easily recognised, having a small bit of oolouried silk on their feet, and the age and quality of each bird are registered, For example, a red piece of silk indicates a swallow perfectly trained, while a blue piece signifies one whose training ia not yet complete. Four of the little prisoners — the oldest not more than twenty days — were let loose. It was raining in torrents at the moment, a circumstance by no means favorable to the trial. The birds rose in the air, flew round the house several times, and then darted of into the country, disappearing on the hoiizon Twenty-five minutes after the youngest returned and perched on the balcony ; the other three did not come back before an hour. They all then entered the cage room, when M. Desbouvrie gave them Borne food, which they ate out ot his hand.

Captain Degouy, who has been commissioned by the Government to make an inquiry into the suject, and to see how far these trained swallows may be useful to the army as messengers in time of war, has not yet been able to teat their efficacy, owing to the fact that the birds at present in possession of M. Desbouvrie are too young, and require further training before they can be fairly experimented with. An^inatance of the rapidity of their flight is quoted by the trainer. An untamed swallow, which bad its neat in a farm near Roubalx, was caught, and taken in a cage to Paris, where it was released. It returned to its nest in 90mln, having accomplished a distance oE 258 kilometres, or over two mile a minute. M. Desbouvrie is certain that a far greater speed will be obtained from trained birds. Should the Government accept his idea, which he is convinced it will, he propoaes to build a swallow house on the heights of Montmartre, and another on Mont Valerien. The superiority of swallows over pigeons as carriers, both as regards to swiftness of their travelling and the difficulty of shooting them, is evident ; but they have yet to be tried on a larger scale before a verdict can be pronounced ou them. Still, the results already obtained are remarkable, and tbe prospects of • the messenger of the zephjra,' as one old poet calls the sacred little bird, being pressed into military service is another proof of the utilitarianism of tbe age. — Paris correspondent of the Globe.