l organization of the French system requires a central station
at Paris and three secondary centers at Langres, Lyons and Tours, the
latter being established in view of a new invasion.

As the distance of Paris from the frontier of the north is but 143
miles at the most, the city would have no need of any intermediate
station in order to communicate with the various places of the said
frontier. Langres would serve as a relay between Paris and the
frontier of the northeast. For the places of the southeast it would
require at least two relays, Lyons and Langres, or Dijon.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--THEORETIC MAP OF THE FRENCH SYSTEM OF MILITARY
DOVE COTES.]

As Paris has ten directions to serve, it should therefore possess ten
different dove cotes, of 720 birds each, and this would give a total
of 7,200 pigeons. According to the same principle, Langres, which has
five directions to provide for, should have 3,600 pigeons.

Continuing this calculation, we find that it would require 25,000
pigeons for the dove cotes as a whole appropriated to the frontiers of
the north, northeast, east, and southeast, without taking into account
our frontiers of the ocean and the Pyrenees.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--BASKET FOR CARRYING PIGEONS.]

A law of the 3d of July, 1877, supplemented by a decree of the 15th of
November, organized the application of carrier pigeons in France.

One of the last enumerations shows that there exist in Paris 11,000
pigeons, 5,000 of which are trained, and, in the suburbs, 7,000, of
which 3,000 are trained. At Roubaix, a city of 100,000 inhabitants,
there are 15,000 pigeons. Watrelos, a small neighboring city of 10,000
inhabitants, has no less than 3,000 carrier pigeons belonging to three
societies, the oldest of which, that of Saint-Esprit, was founded in
1869.

In entire France, there are about 100,000 trained pigeons, and
forty-seven departments having pigeon-fancying societies.

_Germany._--After the war of 1870, Prussia, which had observed the
services rendered by pigeons during the siege of Paris, was the first
power to organize military dove cotes.

In the autumn of 1871, the Minister of War commissioned Mr. Leutzen, a
very competent amateur of Cologne, to study the most favorable
processes for the recruitment, rearing, and training of carrier
pigeons, as well as for the organization of a system of stations upon
the western frontier.

In 1872, Mr. Bismarck having received a number of magnifice