There has been much discussion regarding the means by which pigeons return to their homes over such long distances. Untrained birds often fail to return, and during training your birds are often lost.
Many instances are recorded of the employ ment of pigeon messengers by ancient peoples. During the first half of the 19th century pig eons were widely used in Great Britain for the rapid communication of intelligence, and in par ticular many stockbrokers obtained early in formation of the state of the markets by this means.. The introduction of the electric tele graph, however, soon led to the complete dis use of the pigeon post. The siege of Paris during the Franco-German War of 1870-71 first brought the carrier-pigeon into prominent notice as a valuable means of communication in time of war. During that siege more than 350 birds were sent out of the city in balloons, and of these some 300 were liberated with messages. Only some 70 returns were made, and these were effected by 57 birds. By the adoption of microphotography the space occu pied by a message was so reduced that a single pigeon could carry a very large number of messages without having its movements ham pered in the least. One of the pigeons that
succeeded in returning to Paris carried no less than 40,000 messages on 18 collodion films which were enclosed in a goose-quill attached to the tail. Since that time the leading Con tinental powers have established elaborate pig eon systems for use in time of war. During the war with Spain, in 1898, the fleet of vessels that patroled the Atlantic Coast was supplied with a number of carrier-pigeons' cotes, but happily there was no occasion for testing their effectiveness, though in times of peace mes sages are frequently successfully carried from war vessels to points on the shore. During the European War carrier-pigeons were exten sively used by all the belligerents. Consult books mentioned under PIGEONS.
HOMINID/a; Wining-A the family to which man was assigned in the earlier systems of animal classification; but many modern zo ologists refuse him so great a distinction, mak ing man, zoologically considered, only a species ((Homo sapiens) of a genus of the family Simiidce, which also includes the genera of the anthropoid apes. See MAN.