AN INTERESTING MEMORIAL.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 11502, 7 February 1903, Page 7

AN INTERESTING MEMORIAL.

Of the making of memorials of one kind and another there appearß no end, and the latest suggestion is certainly not the least curious, that being a proposal to erect in Paris a monument to the memory of the pigeons which carried despatches during the siege of 1870-71. Many of these interesting little messengers were shot by the Germans while on their way; and as a London paper points out, it adds a touch of human interest that they were not engaged in bearing Government despatches alone, but that a distinct proportion of them carried into the beleagured capital information of concern to the families of the besieged residents. In the fib of the London "Times" for January, 1871, are one or two pages filled with advertisements addressed to friends and relatives in Paris; and it was the custom daily to photograph those pagfs on pieces of thin and almost transparent paper aibout an inch and a half in length by an incn in width, and send them to Bordeaux for transmission thence by carrier pigeon to Taris. When received in the French capital the clips were magnified by the aid of a. magic lantern to a large size, and thrown upon a screen, when a staff of clerks immediately transcribed the messages and forwarded them to the places indicated by, the advertisers. Many in England today, therefore, must be interested in this proposed memorial to the Paris carrier pigeons, which furnished one of the ro-< manoes which attach to various developments of our newspaper Press.