Utility and Eognomy of Birds 
imitated the well-made German holder so 
perfectly that it was impossible to tell those 
he made from the captured original. There- 
after a number of ‘‘ dud” messages were 
sent to German lofts with their own birds 
(Daily Mal, 9.iv.10). 
In Italy, on at least one occasion, a 
pigeon-post message brought the news that 
an Austrian convoy was moving in front of 
the British lines; an aeroplane was at once 
despatched and completely disorganised the 
convoy (Daily Mail, 26.vi.18). A com- 
pany of French troops, cut off from their 
fellows by a curtain of fire at Verdun, 
owed their deliverance to a HOMING PIGEON 
(New York American, 28.iv.18). One of the 
most important factors of the defence in the 
Eastern Champagne on July 15th, 1918, was 
the smooth working of the Information, Ser- 
vice under the German bombardment. Each 
pill-box fort in the covering zone was supplied 
with a crate of CARRIER PIGEONS, and the 
birds brought back news of every movement 
of the enemy and every phase of the fight to 
the command posts. One officer commander, 
12 
a 
