ace. It
will suffice to say that sixty-four balloons crossed the Prussian
lines during the war of 1870-1871, carrying with them 360 pigeons, 302
of which were afterward sent back to Paris, during a terrible winter,
without previous training, and from localities often situated at a
distance of over 120 miles. Despite the shooting at them by the enemy,
98 returned to their cotes, 75 of them carrying microscopic
dispatches. They thus introduced into the capital 150,000 official
dispatches and a million private ones reduced by photo-micrographic
processes. The whole, printed in ordinary characters, would have
formed a library of 500 volumes. One of these carriers, which reached
Paris on the 21st of January, 1871, a few days previous to the
armistice, carried alone nearly 40,000 dispatches.

The pigeon that brought the news of the victory of Coulmiers started
from La Loupe at ten o'clock in the morning on the tenth of November,
and reached Paris a few minutes before noon. The account of the
Villejuif affair was brought from Paris to Tourcoing (Nord) by a white
pigeon belonging to Mr. Descampes. This pigeon is now preserved in a
stuffed state in the museum of the city. The carrier pigeon service
was not prolonged beyond the 1st of February, and our winged brothers
of arms were sold at a low price at auction by the government, which,
once more, showed itself ungrateful to its servants as soon as it no
longer had need of their services. After the commune, Mr. La Perre de
Roo submitted to the president of the republic a project for the
organization of military dove cotes for connecting the French
strongholds with each other. Mr. Thiers treated the project as
chimerical, so the execution of it was delayed up to the time at which
we saw it applied in foreign countries.

In 1877, the government accepted a gift of 420 pigeons from Mr. De
Roo, and had the Administration of Post Offices construct in the
Garden of Acclimatization a model pigeon house, which was finished in
1878, and was capable of accommodating 200 pairs.

At present, the majority of our fortresses contain dove cotes, which
are perfectly organized and under the direction of the engineer corps
of the army.

The map in Fig. 1 gives the approximate system such as it results from
documents consulted in foreign military reviews.

According to Lieutenant Grigot, an officer of the Belgian army, who
has written a very good book entitled _Science Colombophile_, a
rationa