144 



Bird -Lore 



A carriage Pigeon cote is stationed for twenty-four hours at 

 Epernay. Its inmates are not set at liberty, whilst the Pigeons in 

 the neighboring carriages are set free for two hours, then carried 

 farther away for the release. The next da}' our carriages have all 

 moved near Chalons, with the exception of the one whose Pigeons 

 had not been freed at Epernay. These birds are divided among the 

 other carriages, which are modeled exactly like the first they occupied. 

 At Chalons the cotes are opened and Pigeons are set at liberty. Some 

 of these, which had made the journey from Epernay to Chalons in a 

 strange carriage, set out for Eperna\' and found their rolling habita- 



PIGEON CARS OF THE FRENCH ARMY 

 Photographed from nature 



tion. How did they succeed in reconstituting their itinerary in the 

 inverse sense from Epernay to Chalons and find again their carriage 

 in a situation of which they could not know the surroundings? 



The law of inverse scent alone permits this fact to be explained. 

 We have repeated this curious experiment many times. 



During the stationing of the cote at the chateau de Morchies two 

 Pigeons strayed away. We found them again at Bapaume, a pre- 

 ceding lodging place of the Pigeon cote. One was retaken ; the 

 other escaped. People sent word to us of his passage in all the 

 localities where his wagon had been stationed. He arrived, in this 

 way, at Houdain. From there he set out for Evreux, resuming the 

 reverse scent of the journey made a few days before in a railway car. 

 At Evreux, where the Pigeon cote had been stationed for many 

 months, we succeeded in capturing him. This itinerary verified, one 



