The use of pigeons as messengers is as old as recorded history, the Chinese, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all having used birds for this purpose. Word of the victory at Waterloo was brought to England by pigeons, and pigeons carried from New York to Washington the news that Napoleon had signed the treaty which added Louisiana to the Union. Among the oldest and most successful pigeon-trainers are the Belgians, many of the best flying strains used by the French, British, and American armies having been developed from Belgian stock. When the Hunnish hordes swept across Belgium, one of their first measures was to confiscate or kill all pigeons. For a Belgian to have in his possession a carrier-pigeon was for him to risk a court martial and death before a firing-party. Many of the pigeons taken from the Belgians were sent back to Germany for breeding purposes, producing birds which served against their former masters, but when the Americans established their watch on the Rhine, they ordered the immediate release of all pigeons in the area of occupation, thus giving thousands of feathered exiles a chance to fly back to their old homes in Flanders. The Carrier-Pigeon Service of the American Army is a part of the Signal Corps, being composed of officers and men who are expert pigeon breeders and handlers, and who have the ability to impart their knowledge to others. The pigeon section, which was organized shortly after our entry into the war, consisted of two companies with a personnel of 24 officers and about 650 men. The birds used by the army are known to the fancier as “homers” and are really not carrier-pigeons at all, the latter being a large, ungainly show-bird that cannot fly a city block. But our allies persist in calling homers “carrier-pigeons,” and our military authorities have adopted the term. The homer has all the qualities required of a military messenger. He is a strong, well-built, racy-looking bird, possessed of indomitable courage. His most characteristic trait is, of course, his remarkable ability to find his home when released at great distances from it. This power, which has been developed by scientific breeding to an almost uncanny degree, is the asset which makes the bird of enormous value to the army. Though scientists have attempted to explain the homing instinct, they have arrived at different and frequently contradictory conclusions, it being enough to know that it is an instinct with which all birds are endowed to a greater or less degree, and which has been developed in the homer to a stage where it is limited only by the bird’s physical endurance. Nature has equipped the pigeon with numerous air-sacs adjoining the lungs, in which a reserve supply of warm air is carried and supplied to the lungs as needed during flight. Over the eye is a transparent lid, called a “blinder,” which protects the eye while in flight, and is at the same time transparent, thus providing a sort of natural goggle.