[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.
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