A pole and sway bars are
fitted for two ponies, and wood cross bars to pass over the backs of
the animals at the tops of the collars. Two men are carried on the
machine, a coachman on the box seat and a stoker on the footboard at
the rear of the engine. The whole forms a very light and readily
transportable fire engine.--_The Engineer_.
* * * * *
THE SYSTEM OF MILITARY DOVE COTES IN EUROPE.[1]
[Footnote 1: Continued from _Scientific American_ of July 11, p. 23.]
_France_.--The history of the aerial postal service and of the carrier
pigeons of the siege of Paris has been thoroughly written, and is so
well known that it is useless to recapitulate it in this place. 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.
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