“In serious situations the carrier-pigeon is a valuable messenger. During the winter of that terrible year, 1870–71, when the German hordes besieged Paris, no communication was possible by ordinary means between the invested city and the rest of France, in arms to repel the odious invader. With Paris rendered mute by its isolation, one might have said that the heart of the country had ceased to beat. For communication between those within and friends without, recourse was had to balloons and pigeons.
“Certain persons of dauntless courage left Paris by balloon, choosing especially the night-time for their departure in order to avoid encounter by day. [[326]]They carried with them despatches from Paris and a number of carrier-pigeons. Over the enemy camps they went, to alight somewhere, far or near, at the pleasure of the winds. Thus the provinces received despatches, newspapers, and private letters from Paris. The car of the balloon was loaded with all these.
“But how carry back to Paris despatches from the provinces? To leave a city by balloon in any chance direction is not so very difficult; but to return by balloon to the same city is practically impossible. The balloon goes as the wind wills, not as its passengers would like to have it go. To seek to return by the means employed in departing would be to compromise everything by incurring the risk of landing in the midst of the Prussian lines.
“The only remaining expedient was to use those incomparable aids, the pigeons, which the aëronaut had taken with him on his departure. Released, one at a time, with despatches enclosed in a quill and fastened to the bird’s tail, they flew back over the German army to the pigeon-house; they reëntered Paris and brought news of what was going on in the provinces.
“Do not imagine that the winged messenger was able to transmit only a few words or at most a few lines. It was not with a pen or on ordinary paper that the despatches entrusted to the pigeons were written. By ingenious methods and with unheard-of delicacy it was found possible to obtain characters so fine and sheets of paper so thin that a roll of these [[327]]sheets weighing scarcely a gram and enclosed in a quill contained as much reading matter as ten printed volumes. What a marvelous piece of work, that package of letters fastened to the pigeon’s tail, that quill transformed into a library in which thousands of persons—friends, kinsfolk, statesmen—communicated their projects, their fears, their hopes! In this manner the mail service was maintained during those woeful times.” [[328]]
CHAPTER LIX
SOME PREHISTORIC ANIMALS
“Fossil remains of all sorts of animals, from the largest to the smallest, are found embedded in stone. There are lizards which, if alive, would hardly find room enough to turn around in many of our public squares, so monstrous is their size; tortoises with shell as large as a small boat; fishes of strange formation; birds of a singular character such as we no longer behold; and enormous quadrupeds that would dwarf to insignificance our sturdy ox. All flying creatures of the air, all walking and creeping animals of the earth, every form of life swimming in the water, are represented in these fossil remains found in the heart of our rocks, but of a shape and often of a size very different from those of our living animals.
“These ancient creatures have never been seen alive by man, so far back in the past is their period. After inhabiting the earth for a very long time, they disappeared forever, to give place to other species. What remains of them consists chiefly of bones, which from their hardness and their mineral character offer the most resistance to the various destructive agencies. With the sole aid of these bones science succeeds in reconstructing the exact form of [[329]]the animal. It also tells us what the animal fed on and what were its habits. By a miracle of sagacity it resuscitates, so to speak, the ancient, dislocated carcass, and makes it live again to the mind’s eye.