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1913.] is then retransmitted, cither automatically or by hand, to the engine-houses: but in London—and in every other European city—each fire station has its own alarm-bureau, in charge of an officer and several operators, these stations receiving only the alarms from the boxes in the immediate neighborhood, All the stations, however, are connected with each other, and with a central-bureau or headquarters, by both telegraph and telephone.



London has something like 4000 fires annually, and spends about $1,250,000 every year to support her fire-brigade. It is estimated that the city of New York (comprising the Boroughs of Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Richmond, and with about the same population as London proper) has 12,500 fires annually, and spends something over $7,500,000 to support her fire-department.

Paris, the fire-brigade comes under the jurisdiction of the, and it is part of the French army that attends to the fire-fighting in this famous city. Two battalions of infantry, known as the “,” look after this important work, and although this brigade is recruited, drilled, and commanded hy various regimental officers, from a colonel down to a lieutenant, and belongs to the war department, it comes under the direct control of the (Chief of Police), who is the actual head of the Paris fire-brigade.

These stations, or, as they are well named, casernes (barracks), are big structures filled with many firemen, on an average about 140 men in every building: and each station is equipped with numerous pieces of fire apparatus, and all are provided with a large inner court, or drill-yard, in which the men go through military evolutions twice daily, and where the new men, who are coming into the brigade continually, are taught how to handle all the various appliances used in fire-fighting. Here also the men are put through a series of calisthenic exercises two or three times a week, which, if introduced into the American fire-departments, would drive every man our of the service, so vigorous are these “stunts.” In acrobatic fashion the Paris firemen are compelled to climb ropes, jump hurdles, balance themselves in mid-air on frail wooden supports, perform on horizontal bars, execute a kind of “setting-up” drill en masse, and last, but not feast, climb up one of the walls of the courtyard, holding on by their finger-tips and the edges of their boots to little crevices in the wall, and falling, if they should slip, into a pile of sand at the bottom. In addition to all this they have the regulation hose, ladder, and life-saving drills of all other fire-departments.

The Paris fire stations are thoroughly up to date in equipment, for we find them fitted with sliding-poles, swinging-harness, horses kept in box-stalls within a pole’s-length of the harness, automatic door-openers, and practically every quick-hitching device for which American fire-departments are noted. And in addition to, aërial ladder-trucks, and hose-wagons—the latter very much of the same type as those used in this country—there are a great many automobile fire-engines in service, and quite a few of the cascrnes, or stations, are equipped entirely with motor-driven apparatus. There are also several electric fire-engines in use, practical-looking affairs,



carrying a large square tank containing 400 gallons of water, which is given the necessary pressure to reach the top of any of the buildings by means of an ingenious set of electric pumps placed at the back of the tank. As it only requires a few men to handle this en