When the rearing and training of carrier-pigeons for French military service was seriously undertaken, the first thing to be done was to find a breed of birds at once intelligent, hardy, strong, light on the wing, and of a dull, uniform colour, likely to escape notice and pursuit. All these attributes are possessed by the Belgian breed, which is divided into two classes; the large, heavy Antwerp, and the smaller, lighter Luttrich variety. The scientific training, which must be begun early, is as follows: As soon as the young pigeons can fly they are taken out of the pigeon-house, put into a basket, and carried (always with the flying-hole of the basket kept carefully turned towards the pigeon-house), to an unknown spot at a short distance, where they are set free and let fly home. It is seldom that a pigeon fails, in the first short trial, to find its way back to its paternal nest. At each trial the distance is slightly lengthened. Pigeons six months old are liberated at a distance of eighty kilometres from home, those of a year old at one hundred and fifty kilometres, those of two years at three hundred kilometres, and older tried birds at six hundred to eight hundred kilometres. These, of course, are average measurements, and are varied according to circumstance. The percentage of losses naturally increases with increasing distance. In long flights the birds meet with innumerable hindrances; rain, hail, fog, wind, and thunderstorms not only impede their flight, but often affect their wonderful sense of locality and direction. The birds are remarkably sensitive to electricity, so that thunderstorms are peculiarly baffling to them, and large forests, great extents of water, and ranges of mountains influence and alter the upper air currents, by the direction of which the pigeons, taught by some marvellous "instinct," are able to steer their course. The average speed of a pigeon is reckoned at a kilometre a minute, and on this basis, and taking into consideration the time of year, length of daylight, weather, &c., calculations are made of the distance a pigeon can be sent. In summer, when daylight begins at half-past three in the morning and lasts till half-past eight at night, a trained pigeon can fly about one thousand kilometres in a day, while on a foggy November day, when the daylight begins late and darkness comes on early, the same bird cannot accomplish more than four hundred kilometres. One great drawback hitherto attendant on the use of pigeons has been the supposed impossibility of making them fly backwards and forwards between two points; they would only fly in one direction. Now, however, Captain Malogoli, the head of the Italian military carrier pigeon depôts, has, after immense and unwearying trouble, succeeded in getting his pigeons to fly backwards and forwards between Rome and Civita Vecchia (seventy-two kilometres). This practical success has shattered the theories of various ornithologists, as Russ, who have