sort of pigeon used, when properly trained, to be sent with letters from one place to another. See Columba.

Though you carry these birds hood-winked, 20, 30, nay, 60 or 100 miles, they will find their way in a very little time to the place where they were bred. They are trained to this service in Turkey and Persia; and are carried first, while young, short flights of half a mile, afterwards more, till at length they will return from the farthest part of the kingdom. Every Bashaw has a basket of these pigeons bred in the seraglio, which, upon any emergent occasion, as an insurrection, or the like, he dispatches, with letters branded under their wings, to the seraglio; which proves a more speedy method, as well as a more safe one, than any other; he sends out more than one pigeon, however, for fear of accidents. Lithgow affirms us, that one of these birds will carry a letter from Babylon to Aleppo, which is 30 days journey, in 48 hours. This is also a very ancient practice; Hirtius and Brutus, at the siege of Modena, held a correspondence with one another by means of pigeons. And Ovid tells us, that Taurothemos, by a pigeon stained with purple, gave notice to his father of his victory at the Olympic Games, sending it to him at Ægina.