Rock Lighthouse Research Articles

Carrier-Pigeons

IN NATURE (vol. xviii. p. 682) it is stated that carrier pigeons are being “turned to useful account” in a new direction in Germany, for Consul Ward writes to the Foreign Office “that the successful results attained by the establishment of communication between the two Eider lightships and the Port of Tönning, in Schleswig, by these means has led to its organisation” elsewhere. This mode of communication is, however, not new, as carrier-pigeons were employed early in this century as a means of communication with the Bell Rock Lighthouse, as mentioned in my late father's “Account” of that work. The pigeons passed between the lighthouse and the shore—a distance of eleven miles in eleven minutes. The employment of these birds, however, was, I suppose, found to be more curious than convenient, for they have long since ceased to be employed. The pigeons were presented to the establishment by the late Sir Samuel Brown, R.N.

5. Notice of the Ravages of the Limnoria Terebrans on Creosoted Timber

The author stated that it would be difficult to estimate the value of any chemical or mechanical process whereby timber might be rendered permanently impervious to the ravages of the Limnoria terebrans, that small but sure destroyer of timber structures exposed to the action of the sea.The ravages of that crustacean were first observed in 1810 by Mr Robert Stevenson, the engineer of the Bell Rock Lighthouse, in the timber supports of the temporary beacon used by him in the erection of that work. Having forwarded specimens of the insect, and of the timber it had destroyed, to Dr Leach, the eminent Naturalist of the British Museum, Dr Leach, in 1811, announced it as a “new and highly interesting species which had been sent to him by his friend Robert Stevenson, civil engineer,” and assigned to it the name of Limnoria terebrans (Linnean Trans., vol. xi. p. 370, and Edinburgh Encyclopædia, vol. vii. p. 433).