Salt Lake Tribune | 1904-10-30 | Page 40 | Experiments with Pigeons

" EXPERIMENTS WITH PIGEONS. Fancier Sending Birds to Equator to Watch Them Fly Back. A very Interesting experiment In pigeon flying: Is being made by John B. McCalTerty of Germantown. Not only will ho liberate birds for a very long trial, but he Is sending them south of the equator to demonstrate If they will fly north or south to And their home locality lo-cality In longitude and latitude. On Saturday, October 1G, Mr. Cafferty shipped via steamship Dunstan, to Harry' Nudlng, Para, Brazil, for liberation, libera-tion, seven homing plgeony, four males and three females, males to be liberated one day and females another. It Is- almost an Impossibility to home from there, for to fly In a straight line would necessitate crossing the Caribbean Ca-ribbean sea and the Gulf of Mexico, and while there are many Islands, still it Is regarded as impossible to home by that route. There might be a chance that, after they had traveled as far north as Caraccas, they would not attempt the ocean and might continue to the west on land and strike the Isthmuo of ranama. There Is still another and more Interesting Inter-esting problem. Para Is dtuated at the mouth of the Amazon river, about seventy-five miles south of the Equator. It has been suggested that when liberated, Instead of flying north, the birds may turn south. That would go for, It ls believed, be-lieved, to ascertain the vrav birds find their home. Every bird, In addition to the usual request stamped on every wing feather, also carries a German silver sil-ver band on which is Mr. McCafferty's nnme and address, so that should he hear from one. either In the latitude of Rio Janeiro to the sx)uth or Panama to the north, It will amply repay him for the trouble.