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 rational 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.]