er, 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
states his having shot the passenger pigeon (_columba migratoria_) in
America, and found in its stomach, _rice_, which could not have been
obtained within a distance of eight hundred miles."

_Parable of the Good Samaritan._

"Our readers will remember the beautiful parable of the _good
Samaritan_, and his kindness and compassion for the wounded stranger
'who fell among thieves,' on his journey from _Jerusalem to Jericho_.
Sichem or Sychar, the district of the Samaritans, and which they now
inhabit, is about forty miles from Jerusalem. Jericho is about nineteen
miles from the capital of Judea; and, as it was in the first century, so
the intervening country _still remains_ infested by banditti. Sir
Frederick Henniker, as late as 1820, on his journey from Jerusalem to
Jericho, was way-laid, attacked by a band of predatory Arabs, and
plundered. He was stripped naked, and left severely wounded; and in this
state was carried to Jericho."

_David and Goliath._

"David's encounter with Goliath, the champion of the Philistines, is
mentioned in I Samuel xvii.: and in the 40th verse is described the
simple armour with which the shepherd boy, Jesse's son, repaired to the
contest. Many a thirsty pilgrim, as he passes through the valley of
Eluh, on the road from Bethlehem to Jaffa (Joppa), has drunk of 'the
brook in the way'--that very brook from whence the minstrel youth 'chose
him five smooth stones.' 'Its present appearance,' says a recent