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
