80 LIFE OF TEGETMEIER 



to the British Army abroad than at home." 

 The following extract has a certain interest, 

 historic now, as I presume wireless telegraphy 

 has long since superseded the pigeon-post. He 

 wrote : "In our Navy the communication of 

 intelligence by means of pigeons is now officially 

 recognised as a part of the great system of signal- 

 ling. In 1896 the first naval loft was established 

 by the Admiralty at Portsmouth, and now there 

 are two more pigeon stations, one at Sheerness 

 and the other at Dartmouth. Experiments are 

 made with a view to training the birds to keep 

 up communication between ship and shore. There 

 are over 1,000 homing pigeons on the books of 

 the Royal Navy, and the birds are under strict 

 discipline." 



Attached to the cutting from the Daily News is 

 another, stating that " the Great Barrier Pigeon 

 Training Agency of New Zealand has offered the 

 Government a number of homing pigeons for 

 carrying despatches in South Africa." This local 

 Pigeon-post (which I believe was the only regular 

 public pigeon service then in existence) had been 

 described by Mr. Tegetmeier in the Field, and 

 by myself in the Times, and illustrated in the 

 St. James's Budget some two months earlier. 

 Afterwards, when I was editing the Picture Post- 

 card and Collectors' Chronicle, I wrote an article in 

 it on the subject, and also published a pictorial 

 postcard bearing a reproduction of the first 



