Pigeons Humbled

Mr. and Mrs. Frank A. Vanderlip decided to give a Japanese garden party at Beechwood, Scarborough-on-the- Hudson, for the benefit of Tsuda College, destroyed by the Japanese earthquake. They wanted to invite Secretary Hughes and Ambassador Hani-hara. So they martialed a flock of carrier pigeons and the 102nd Aviation Squadron of the National Guard at Staten Island, to deliver a message to each of these distinguished diplomats. Lieutenant J. Kendrick, of the Aviation Squadron, was equipped with a Curtiss plane--familiarly known as a "Jenny," powered with a 100-horsepower engine and capable of 70 to 75 miles an hour at most. The airman and Nature's fliers left Miller Field on Staten Island about the same time. The first three pigeons soared high above the aviator, led the race till plane and birds were all lost to view. Quite evidently they had speed. But although Kendrick, fighting strong head winds, had to land twice for gasoline--once at Philadelphia and again at Baltimore--he beat the fastest bird by 2 hours, 41 minutes. The fastest pigeon took 6 hours, 11 minutes to reach the home of his owner--one F. W. Dismer of Columbia Road, Washington. Pigeons can fly enormous distances-- birds have been killed in New York State whose crops contained undigested grains of rice that must have been plucked in South Carolina or Georgia. They can fly well over 70 miles an hour in a burst of speed. But even a slow, man-controlled airplane can beat them as a letter-carrier.