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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
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